I got so many complaints that some people never got to read the end of Screwing Up that I decided I was going to give those people a holiday gift and post the chapters back up on Twilighted.Net. Yes, girls and that one guy. Screwing Up is back up! I'll probably take it down after a month or two but I'll give PLENTY of notice so you can read it. It's going to take a bit to upload in full since Twilighted needs to approve each chapter but I somewhat refuse to post it on FFnet again. I don't want to get bitched at about spam story or author alerts. Agh. There's always one kid who bitches. Anyways.

My apologies for taking it down so early in the first place. Happy holidays!

TO READ: http://twilighted.net/viewstory.php?sid=5892

The award-winning fic is now complete! Check it out in full on Fanfiction.net.



Title: CITY OF INK

Fandom: The Mortal Instruments Trilogy
Disclaimer: All characters and original plotline belong to Cassie Clare.
Characters/Pairings: Jace/Clary (mainly), also Magnus/Alec, Simon/Izzy, Jocelyn/Luke
Rating: NC-17 for language and a few extremely descriptive sex scenes.
Genre: Angst/Smut/Romance/Comedy
Final Word Count: 49,086 / 13 Chapters

SUMMARY: Post-COG. To keep her health issues a secret from Jace, Clary takes a vow of celibacy. But how long will she last, and how far will Jace go to protect her? Sex talks with Alec, Magnus wears white, & Izzy falls in love... again.

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So, Modern Affairs got so many requests for a sequel that I decided to write this. As you probably know by now, the first part (based on some sad yet real life experiences) inspired the Jasper in my life to finally come to me. This part's dedicated to her. Before you ask, no the threesome never actually happened. Lol. The usual warnings apply. Enjoy!

(Forgive errors! It's not edited in the least.)

MODERN AFFAIRS - PART TWO

I considered myself a happy guy. Sure, there were aspects of my life I couldn’t control which caused immeasurable moments of sadness, but those were passing. They were often drowned out with alcohol and meaningless, casual sex with coworkers. I was pretty good at dealing with the everyday, with coping. It was large, life-altering moments that clung to my heart and sucked the life from me.

Jasper’s wedding had been the worst of these.

He’d been freaking out all over the place and asked me to cling to him like glue. It’d been two months since we ended our affair so the wounds were still fresh. I didn’t have an Alice to go home to so I just swallowed my feelings, but this was a wedding so the booze wouldn’t come until at least another two hours of biblical rhetoric.

I hadn’t been asked to do much to help the wedding though I would have been more than happy to do so. I wanted him to be happy. I broke up with him for this very reason. I’d had five whole months of laughter, love, and sex with the man I loved. It had been enough for a lifetime and I wasn’t asking for more. Alice understood this.

She was a great actress. When Jazz brought me home for the first time after I finally agreed to be his best man, she shook my hand and introduced herself as though we’d never met. She shot me sad, knowing glances when he wasn’t looking. It was the first time I had ever seen pity. I had known disgust, desire, indifference, even outright hate. I had never been pitied. I forgave it because I knew it came from a guilty place.

Jazz went to get us a bottle of wine for dinner. I asked to stay to help her finish cooking. Truthfully, I just didn’t want to be alone with him. It’d have been the equivalent of purposefully locking myself in the lion’s cage. No thank you. I even offered to fetch it for us but he insisted. Jazz was useless in the kitchen anyway since he’d had a battalion of women around him since he was born, ready and able to cook anything his little heart desired. I was on my own practically since birth so I could at least boil water like the best of them. I watched her from afar and fetched her things when she needed them. I more or less knew my way around their kitchen.

She didn’t really like to talk, much like Jazz. She did so only when asked something and then, she was beyond enthusiastic. She was like an Energizer bunny with an on and off switch. She was perfect for Jazz.

I sat on the counter like I owned the place and watched her check the chicken breasts in the oven. She continued to stir some bubbly white sauce in a pan and talked softly about one thing or another. I wasn’t paying much attention to the conversation since it seemed pretty one-sided. She noticed and shot me a quick smirk, stopping completely. I wasn’t interested so she moved on, despite how hard we’d all attempted not to talk about our pasts altogether.

“He wanted us to have this dinner, you know,” she said after a moment of silence, continuing to stir in a slow, steady rhythm.

That sure as fuck caught my attention. I straightened right up. We were going to be brave and talk about it, about us. “He told me you wanted to meet me before the wedding,” I replied.

She shook her head and smiled. She took the sauce off the stovetop and explained. “He hadn’t talked about you in a month. He usually talks about you a couple times a week, tells me when you call or something platonic like that. I catch him drifting off a lot. He gets all pensive and smiles to himself and I know he’s thinking of you. He copies your smirk to a tee. A week ago, we were at a fashion show for a friend of mine and he was his usual self, nothing special. He hadn’t seen you for a while, I knew, but I thought he was finally getting over you, you know? Then this jerk named James from my friend’s design team comes up and starts flirting with me while Jasper’s getting us drinks.”

“And Jazz didn’t do anything?” I interrupted.

She shook her head again and checked on the chicken for the third time in five minutes, her little nervous tick. She smiled brighter at my reaction but still avoided my eyes. Was it the pity or the guilt, I wondered. I never really got an answer but she eventually got over it.

She continued, “He didn’t really notice. He was on the other side of the room, but he’s coming back and James has me cornered against a wall! Guess what he does.”

“Politely interrupts and pulls you away?” I offered.

She laughed and nodded. “So we’re walking away and James says something about my clothing line, something I didn’t even hear, and Jazz turns around and decks James across the face! James comes crashing down and I’m just standing there, wondering how much ice I’m going to need to keep his hand from blowing up like a balloon or what I’d do if he broke a knuckle. We leave and, in the car, I ask him why he did it. He says, ‘It’s what Edward would have done,’ and that’s when we decided I need to get to know you better. The dinner was his suggestion.”

I started cackling halfway through her story. I just kept imagining Jasper doing anything even remotely violent and had to slide off the counter to keep from falling forward with laughter. “God, I wish I could have been there.”

“So did I,” she sadly admitted and my laughter slowly ceased. I walked towards her and held her hand reassuringly.

“How are you and Jazz doing? Has he changed?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know but I felt I had to ask. I felt like Alice was an extension of Jazz and thus, instantly trusted her. I couldn’t really ask Jazz how he was doing without admitting to still wanting him desperately but I could ask Alice.

“He’s still Jazz,” she said. “You were right, I guess. He didn’t suddenly become more affectionate or drift away. He’s the same as he was with you so I have to believe he does love me. He hides his feelings but you and I both know he would have changed if he didn’t care about me. How ‘bout you? I can take care of Jazz but who takes care of you?”

I smirked and joked, “Mike the mail boy.”

She burst out laughing and put her hand on my chest to steady herself, shaking her head. “No, you nymphomaniac! I mean actually taking care of you.”

I shrugged. “Nobody’s ever taken care of me, Al, not even Jazz. I’m a lone wolf.”

Her laughter got louder, melodic. “You poor puppy! It’s your own fault, you know!”

“I know! I know! But I don’t want anybody.”

The pity came rushing back into her eyes. “Anybody else?” she finished for me. I shot her my cockiest one-sided smirk. “Are you just going to go on for the rest of your life pining for him?”

I rolled my eyes and let go of her hand, backing up one large step. “I’m not pining, Al. I don’t want to spend my life with anyone! Why is that so hard to believe? I like having Mike the mail boy and Ben the upstairs neighbor and the cute redhead from last night’s club in my life. I like pleasure. I’m complete with it. If it gets lonely, I just go out again.”

The little girl who’d showed up at my door had gone. She was more like Jazz than I imagined. She deeply cared about everyone around her. Unlike Jazz, she actually did something about it. “And do what? Hook up? Get drunk? Take whatever powdered shit they have in the back room? Jazz has told me how you live! He’s constantly worried about you, especially now that you obviously don’t talk as much anymore.”

Jazz had not said anything about my night-time habits. He made jokes about my past partners but never made his disappointment known. I hadn’t gone out when we were together, even though we never said we’d be exclusive. It was obvious that he had Alice but I had never made any promise to be with him alone. I tried to think back on all those casual goodbyes, his expression every time he left me. There had been a tinge of worry there that I always chalked up to his situation with Al and her inevitable discovery. I never thought it might be worry over my well-being, whether he came back the next day just to check to make sure I was still alive.

Alice could see the realization on my face and let me work it out in quiet. “I think I need to talk to him,” I whispered.

She nodded and waved towards the door. “He’ll be coming up soon. I’d hurry and catch him in the hallway before he gets to the door.”

“You gonna be okay?” I asked her before I left, making sweeping motions with my arm.

She smiled sweetly and reworded my question. She was blunt. I liked it. “You mean is it okay to talk to my fiancé when I’m not in the room? Am I constantly worried that you’re going to pick up the affair right where you left off?” I nodded, my cheeks suddenly warm. She scoffed. “Of course, dumbass! I’m going to spend the rest of my life worried about that. Lucky for me, I know you’re the only one he’d ever leave me for and you have more morals – twisted as they may be – than even he does. So go on. I fucking trust you. I guess.”

I laughed and went. I waited in the only elevator, positive he wouldn’t take the stairs. We were on the sixth floor and he’d probably be carrying booze, if he hadn’t drunk it all already. I certainly would have. People got on and off but I remained. It reached the first floor and there he was. He lit up when he saw me leaned up against the back wall, my arms crossed with that odd expression of frustration I got whenever I worked out a speech.

“What, you weren’t leaving, were you?” he asked.

He stepped inside and pressed the sixth floor button, not waiting for an answer. He wasn’t going to let me leave. I didn’t plan to. I hit the emergency stop button and took the brown paper bag out of his arm. I set it down on the floor and he suddenly got the severity of the situation. I wanted to have a serious talk. He exhaled and leaned up against the opposite wall, as far away as possible.

“Something changed,” he said. “Is this about us?”

I realized how it looked. We hadn’t been so close in a while, certainly not so alone. The sexual tension was never going to leave. Even though I was pretty sure I was having an epiphany, I couldn’t help but notice the way his shirt clung to him or the way it lifted up and revealed two beautiful, protruding hip bones when he scratched the back of his head nervously. I cleared my throat and he got the hint to stop it. He lowered his arm, securing them behind his back, and fixed his eyes on my shoes.

“Has something happened?”

I shook my head. “No, hon. I just wanted to know something. It doesn’t change a thing, okay. I just want to know.” He gulped and his eyes shot back up to me. I continued, “When we were together, did you ever think I was seeing someone else?”

“What?” he asked with a laugh.

“I’m serious. Alice told me that you worry about me. Is that true?” I insisted, seconds away from gritting my teeth like an animal. “IS IT TRUE?”

“YES!” he shouted back, stepping forward. The anger he’d been hiding exploded out of his pores at my persistence. “I fucking loved you but you never said I was the only one! You never hid any of your little games before we were together. Then you stopped talking and I couldn’t tell you how much I wished things had changed, that you’d changed. I couldn’t ask you that when I had Alice. And then you break it off, claiming it wasn’t working, and I’m left wondering if you just weren’t getting enough from me, whether you needed more than I alone could ever give you. Admit it, Edward! You’re just not a one-man man.”

I was furious but I couldn’t help the chuckle at the last part. I quickly sobered up but the whole thing was ridiculous. I opened my mouth to correct him but I couldn’t. I just gaped at him like a fish underwater, desperate for air. I wanted him to know the truth. I couldn’t stand the lie anymore but Alice’s little face flashed in my head, her smile especially. I couldn’t hurt her now.

“I don’t want you to worry about me,” I honestly replied. It was the best I could do without correcting him, without opening up old wounds.

“How the fuck do you want me to do that, Edward? Tell me.”

I smirked because I absolutely loved this new aggressiveness. If this had been a few months ago, I would have thrown him up against the wall and ripped his pants off.

“What if I promise to stop?” I whispered. “What if I stopped going out and fucking everything I see? What if I lock up the booze and stopped the drugs? Would you stop worrying?”

He just scoffed and backed away. I instantly longed for the closeness again. I wanted to start another fight just to get this level of emotion out of him. Even after that week he decided to give S&M a try, it wasn’t this real, this intense. He had to have been bottling it up for a while.

“Edward, I would never ask that of you.”

His response caught me off guard so I closed the space for him. “Why the fuck not? It’s not like it’s an unreasonable request.”

“Man, I’ve always known you care about me. I knew you’d do anything I asked. It’s mutual, always will be, but you don’t have relationships. You don’t know how and you never wanted to learn. Look at us! The only way I could keep you as long as I did was by locking you up in that apartment. You like sex, Ed. It’s how you compensate for not having all the other crap.”

I wished I could say anything about that but it was true. It was the exact same conversation I’d had with Alice, only he knew my point and defended me and my right to fuck whoever I wanted. What’s worse, he offered me a different scenario. I’d always thought we’d stayed at the apartment because he couldn’t risk being seen with me. I didn’t think it had anything to do with my habits. For just a flicker of a moment, I pondered whether or not maybe we could have worked out, in public.

“What do you want me to do then?”

He closed his eyes and said, “Tell me about it. You used to tell me everyone you fucked like you were telling me what you’d had for lunch. We broke off what we had and you just stopped talking about it like it was going to change something. I never cared who you fucked! Just talk to me! Tell me the truth, tell me where you’ll be so I know where to look when you don’t make it home again!”

I gulped, remembering that morning I’d woken up in Fort Worth. I had to call Jazz from a gas station to come pick me up because I couldn’t find my phone. Since then, I’ve been a bit more careful. I still had no clue how I got there, only that I’d walked a large part and hadn’t slept with anyone. As long as I remembered who I slept with, I knew I was being safe. That was the most important thing. No condom, no ride on my disco stick. Period. Not even with Jasper.

“Deal,” I answered. It took him by surprise. He expected me to complain and demand my independence now that we weren’t together anymore. If one of us had been a chick, this conversation would have taken a completely different turn.

“What do you mean deal?”

“I mean I’ll follow your rules. I’ll cut down on the crazy shit, just enough to keep me fun but safe and the rest, I’ll tell you about. You sure though? The instant it gets sick, you better fucking tell me or I disappear completely. This thing we have, this friendship, is the only relationship I would never give up on. All these years, all these arguments and ugly truths, we never lose touch for long.”

Something I said made him jump. “Never give up on…” he echoed softly. I wondered then if he knew. He could read me like no one else. The way his eyes grew large and he stared, mesmerized. I was forced to avoid the beautiful blue I loved. It just fueled his suspicions.

The confidence he’d developed from his relationship with Alice, this new fierceness he developed after his relationship with me… it resurfaced and he rode the wave. This little back and forth, advance and retreat dance we’d had for the last ten minutes suddenly reached an ending and he pinned me against the wall.

“You still love me,” he said with a triumphant smile. “I knew it.”

His eyes were suddenly like sapphires, brilliant. I stopped breathing, praying my heartbeat didn’t give me away. I was sure the entire floor could hear it.

“Of course I love you. I never said I didn’t. I said we weren’t working. That was it,” I confessed. I might as well have kept quiet. He had no interest in my mouth’s ability to emit sound. He leaned in slowly, his smile increasing. I shut my eyes and gritted my teeth, praying he’d realize I was unwilling and stopped.

He didn’t, of course. That would have meant my life was easy and not this fucked up mess I’d built for myself. He undid the top button of my jeans with one hand, a trick I’d taught him, and slid down the zipper. His hand slipped inside and stroked my length so slowly that I had to hold my breath and purse my lips to control myself. My palms were flat against the metal wall but I could have sworn my nails went right through. I couldn’t move.

His other hand caressed the stubble on my jaw. He traced my bottom lip with his thumb and I exhaled, succumbing to him. I cursed to myself but my hands remained clawed. He pulled my cock out and went to kiss my jaw, avoiding my unwilling lips. I knew he wouldn’t go further unless I gave him the go-ahead, even a tiny kiss back or a moan. I had to remind him, and myself, of why we broke it off in the first place.

“Alice is right outside this elevator, Jazz. You forget about her?”

It was a low blow but it was necessary. He stiffened but reached to cup my balls nonetheless. It was freezing in the elevator so his cold hands on the warmest part of my anatomy were making me edgy. I made a note not to make him angry. If he squeezed anything too hard, I was going to be walking funny for a month.

“No, I didn’t fucking forget about her. I never did. That was you. You never cared that I was with her. What changed, Edward? What did I do?”

I had the sudden desire to cry. It was all over my face and it made him drop all of me, instantly. I couldn’t tell him. I still couldn’t tell him.

He apologized and backed away again. He turned his back to me to face the buttons while I put everything back in my pants, zipped up, and straightened my shirt. I cleared my throat to give him the OK and he unlocked the elevator. I picked up the wine off the floor. The doors opened and we walked back to dinner. Alice was waiting, the table set. She was looking through Jazz’s CDs for something but abandoned everything when she saw us come in.

“You two good?” she asked, glancing at me for an explanation. My tired, hooded eyes gave her the answer. If I’d gotten some in an elevator, I would have been a hell of a lot happier, maybe even a little lushy.

“We’re good,” I answered. “We made a deal. Though if I’m gonna be cutting back on the sex, I expect a lot more dinners out of you two. Gotta keep my mind occupied somehow.”

Jazz still looked deathly and walked past me to kiss Alice hello. Strangely enough, it didn’t make me jealous. I liked Alice. I gave a sharp laugh and Jazz snapped to face me. “What?” he demanded sourly.

“You guys are cute together,” I said, going to sit at the table. He wasn’t amused.

They followed and the mindless conversations continued. I didn’t pay much attention to those either until Jasper decided to be a vindictive ass and ask, “So Edward. You seeing anyone?”

I nearly choked on a mouthful of linguini. Alice dropped her utensils and moved her hands and eyes to her lap. “You’d be the first to know, honey,” I replied, just as cruelly. He thought the conversation was for Alice but she just looked like she wanted to get out there.

“No, come on. Don’t be shy. Alice has a gay cousin. She gets it.”

I bit the inside of my cheeks to keep from jumping to my feet and decking him. Alice beat me to it. She stood and threw her arms in the air in exasperated surrender. “Oh would you just get over it!” she shouted, playing her part. I was proud of her. “Was is it going to take for you two to get over this stupid sexual tension you’ve got left over from when you were kids?”

Jazz’s eyes widened. “Alice!” he shouted. He still didn’t get that she knew. She knew everything, that is wasn’t just since we were kids and it wasn’t left over. It was still active and trying to claim the last bit of my soul I’d managed to retain.

“What? You’re allowed to be rude and inappropriate and I’m not? Edward said it, Jazz. We’re too alike for our own good. And you’re right. I fucking get it. So tell me. What changed? What more can I do?”

“How’d you know?” Jazz asked, barely audible. His eyes flew around all over the place, searching his memory for something that had given him away.

Alice lied. All we knew to do was lie. “I know you. I knew it the instant you both walked through that door this afternoon. You’re like two teenagers.”

Jazz shook his head and stood too. “And you’re just okay with that?” he screeched.

He was getting louder, angrier. He couldn’t understand what Alice and I did, that loving more than one person was normal and that it didn’t endanger what he and Alice had. We just had to end so that he and Alice could live their lives on their own. It just never occurred to me that Alice really didn’t mind that Jasper wanted me or even that I wanted him right back. Maybe she knew she’d always win.

“You’re the only one in this room who gives a damn,” I answered for her.

I stood too and rounded the table. I wrapped an arm around Alice’s waist and, against everything I knew to be true, brought my lips to hers.

I saw her as a softer, smaller version of Jazz and that seemed to help. Jasper had to be able to tell how uncomfortable I was doing this but he didn’t intervene right away. Alice barely moved her lips but it was enough to fake it. I didn’t pull away, crushing her chest to mine. She was so small that I thought she was going to slip out of my arms and float away.

It took him a minute or two to respond but he did. He took my arm and pulled me off her. I expected to see him angry and hurt. He wasn’t. He was just tired of pretending.

“Stop,” he whispered, pleading me with his eyes. “Don’t take this out on her.”

Then, Alice surprised me. She caressed Jasper’s cheek and pulled him down to her for a much more passionate kiss. I watched and waited for Alice’s permission. She broke away from him and looked from one to the other, her two favorite boys. It was the most painful kiss of my life because I knew what it meant – nothing – but I did it nonetheless.

I kissed Jasper, tenderly and slowly, as his fiancé watched.

She let out a tiny moan and then, the frenzy began. We crashed, all three of us. It was an odd tangle of arms and legs and kisses in even odder areas that were never otherwise sensuous like arms and the middle of the back, just so we had something to do with our lips. We started tearing our own clothes off because it was too confusing to coordinate who’d take off whose.

Alice was the first to move towards the couch in the corner that looked like it belonged in a shrink’s office. All she had to do was slip off those straps on her little dress and she was down to a strapless bra and panties, both a jaunty yellow. I was still working on my socks, hopping around on one foot. Jasper pulled off his pants quickly and I noticed his arousal was almost at full force. Of course, to him, this was all very natural. He’d been with women and men. Alice had been with all sorts of men, no doubt.

But I had never been with a woman.

Sure, I knew the basic anatomy and what everything did. I went to public school after all and you learn the rest from an orgy or two here and there but I’d just watched before. I’d never joined in. I lingered back, one sock still on. I looked at them as Alice lied back on the couch and Jasper slid slowly down atop her, lining their bodies up. I wasn’t sure where I was supposed to go except behind Jasper. Alice looked up at me, beckoning me over. I could see my own fear mirrored in her eyes.

“Come,” she whispered, extending a hand up to me. I crossed the living room and bent down to kiss her upside-down quickly, if only to thank her for this one last release. I hadn’t expected my last time with Jasper to be my last time so the memory was unclear and our bodies hadn’t registered the goodbye. This was it.

She understood my naiveté with the female form and looked from me to Jasper to me again, signaling me to take care of him and him alone. I kissed her again, another thanks, as Jasper watched on his knees, straddling her. I ran my hands up Jasper’s spine. He shivered and looked back over his shoulder. I trailed my kisses from his lips to his jaw to that spot he liked beneath his ear.

I quickly understood that this was not a regular threesome the likes of which I’d seen in many late-night porn sessions. The point was not the girl. It was Jazz. He took care of Alice and I took care of him. Nobody needed to take care of me. I’d never needed anyone else.

He slowly bent over and started these slow circling motions on her crotch, moving the underwear aside to reveal her sex to better rub at her clit between sloppy, slippery kisses. My cheeks caught fire at the sight, not that I was necessarily quite aroused yet and there wasn’t much I could do without lube. I ran my hands up and down his sides and when he bent over, I bent over him and reached around his hip for his cock, stroking up and down as he began fingering Alice without the slightest warning. He fit right in and used his thumb to keep massaging what I imagined was her clit. It was so small and completely outside her opening so I had no idea how women got off at all.

I had to hand it to them though. They came with their lube built in. I heard Jasper whisper in her ear, “Baby, you’re so wet,” and paused my strokes for a moment. I had never heard those words uttered during sex outside of a shower. Usually, it went more like, “Baby, you’re so big,” or “Ah, stop! It hurts! It hurts!”

Jazz had to be doing something right because she started to thrash about and moan. I’d never heard a man moan like that. Everything was new and strange, since I was used to seeing this on a computer screen and usually only for two minutes before all the guys came along and took it over. Her pitch was higher than a man’s, obviously, but it just made everything seem more erotic. It sounded like Jazz was sincerely rocking her fucking world. I was envious and leaned forward to kiss his neck, calling for a little attention.

Alice arched her back, pushing his fingers deeper into her. He was in all four fingers while his thumb kept making circles over the fleshy part at the end of the other fleshy parts. I was amazed by how much Alice seemed to be enjoying herself while Jazz just grunted. Alice came and it was beautiful to see on her face. I was still rubbing down Jasper from behind and finally started to want to join the situation. It wasn’t a goodbye. It was just another late-night adventure, I figured. It was easier to get aroused if I just kept thinking that.

I rubbed my dick between Jasper’s cheeks and pressed myself to him for a better grip. Jazz had a smaller frame than I did, than I was used to. I let out a small moan but Alice was apparently riding a second wave of something glorious. Jazz reached back with his left hand and grabbed my ass, pressing me to him even harder. I moaned into his shoulder blade and began to thrust my hips as though I were inside him.

Alice was coming down the wave and Jazz had pulled out his fingers. I wondered if it was over but neither Jazz nor I had come yet and stopping before that happened was blasphemy in my world. Jazz straightened up and I stopped my motions over his dick. He was stiff as a literal piece of wood but he was stopping. Straight sex continued to confuse me.

He smoothed the hair back from Alice’s face and tilted his head to the right. I couldn’t see his face but I was sure he was smiling lovingly. He’d done that very thing to me and I closed my eyes just to remember that day.

“Honey, where do you keep the lube and the condoms?” he asked Alice casually.

“Oh!” she shouted. “I completely forgot you need those. Yea, they’re in one of my white dresser drawers.”

He nodded, gave her a quick peck on the lips and went in search of our supplies. I just knelt there, looking down at Alice on her back, her legs spread. She was following Jasper with her eyes, licking her lips as though missing him already. She realized I was above her and closed her legs, moving her underwear back into place.

“Sorry. I’m on the pill and since I’m only with him, that stuff is kind of unnecessary. I’m sure this didn’t seem that great to you. Are you enjoying it even a little?” she asked considerately.

I smirked and relaxed, running my clean hand over my eyes. I sat down on my ankles and nodded. “Yea, sorry. I’m not used to female anatomy.”

Her eyes widened and she pushed herself up onto her elbows to better look at me. My nudity didn’t seem to surprise her. She didn’t even notice the one sock I was still wearing. “You’ve never been with a woman?” she asked, her voice dripping disbelief.

“You’re the first one I kiss too, love. Feel special.”

“I do! I do!” she answered, nodding enthusiastically. She looked about at the implications. “You curious?”

I laughed a little, more out of awkwardness than anything. I shrugged. “I kind of am. Not for the reasons a teenage boy might be curious but still.”

She opened up her legs again and said, “Hey, if we’re going to be doing this, you might as well get a full education. I don’t mind.”

I scoffed, my smile gone. “How can you not mind?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Honey, I’m just coming off a multiple orgasm from being in bed with two men. Do you really think I care? I’m on fucking cloud nine. Besides, Jazz knows that the moment I took off my dress, I agreed to anything.”

“But Jazz—”

She looked up over her right shoulder to their bedroom. I could hear light cursing and rifling like Jazz wasn’t having much luck finding the stuff. “Jazz, baby, you mind if I use Edward for a bit?” she said in an almost conversational tone.

“I haven’t found the fucking condoms yet!” a disembodied voice responded.

We both laughed. “We won’t need one for this!” I promised.

A second later, he replied, “Go ahead!”

She reached for the elastic on her underwear and pulled it off, throwing it over her head. She opened her legs as far as they’d go and repeated, “Go ahead.”

My eyes shot open. “Uh, ahead with what?” She held back the laughter. She undid her bra too, reached up, and took my hands. She brought them up to her breast and squeezed for me. I felt like I was playing with fleshy, warm water balloons. “Yea, okay. Those are different.”

She laughed and moved my hands about her skin, lower and lower. We got to her crotch and I cupped her. I shot her a look, asking for permission, and slipped my middle finger inside her, testing how deep I could go. She barely felt it. I would have been jumping. I pulled it out and slipped in two. I pressed my thumb down where Jazz had but didn’t swirl. She was so fucking warm inside and sticky, even though neither of us had gone off inside her.

“Thanks,” I told her and, before I could cut her off, continued, “For letting me feel what Jazz does every day.”

“Think you might switch teams?” she joked.

I laughed hysterically and pulled out of her. “No fucking way. I appreciate the anatomy lesson but I don’t get why you even care about me, why you’d allow yourself to do give in to Jasper’s twisted little mindset.”

“I promise you. It’s my pleasure, and because you’re my friend too now. I like you. You’re honest and beautiful and you know parts of Jazz that I can never know. I figure that having you close to me will get me closer to those parts of him.”

“Those may be the most profound words anyone’s ever said to me while on their back with their legs wide open.” I sighed and brought my fingers up to my face. I looked at them for a moment and decided I might as well taste her. Definitely a bit different too.

When I looked up, Jazz was leaning in the doorway with a box of condoms and a tube of lube, his brow furrowed.

“Sorry,” I said and slid off the couch, standing pathetically limp and useless. I couldn’t even look him in the eyes.

He walked up to me and handed me the tube. I wasn’t used to being this submissive to him but I was in his place, with his girl. I felt like I could do something wrong at any moment and lose him forever. He saw it on my face and tried to smile.

“It’s okay, babe,” he said, reaching up to rake my hair back. It wasn’t the physical intimacy that bothered me. It was the fact that he was so comfortable doing all these little signs of love in front of another person. I missed my apartment so badly. “For the love of God, relax, Edward. It’s not like you haven’t done worse with people you didn’t even know.”

That’s right. With people I didn’t know. This was completely different.

He dropped the box on the coffee table and ran his hands up and down my arms. It did soothe me. I’d had an audience before. It’d just never been a woman. It’d never been someone as virtuous as Alice, who looked upon us with curiosity and unequivocal patience. It was always other horny men who licked their lips and wanked in a corner, usually too timid to take part themselves.

“I want to watch,” Alice said, sitting up on the couch and hugging her knees.

Jasper’s eyes were on me now. He could compartmentalize like a pro. When he was fingering Alice, he was entirely focused on her. When he was covering my dick in sticky lube, he was focused on me. The only way I could get even remotely turned on was by pretending Alice wasn’t there. The moment I did, my body began to respond to Jazz as it normally did.

Our tongues met and fought for dominance. The craving for each other’s warmth was stronger than ever. I think Jazz understood that we only had one last chance at this before the wedding. After those vows were made, neither of them would ever break them. They believed in monogamy, in duty and commitment. I didn’t, at least not in the physical sense.

“This is it,” I warned him as he pressed our bodies together, clenching my ass for dear life. Suddenly, the proximity wasn’t erotic at all. It was just pathetic. I couldn’t kiss him enough and, at the same time, I couldn’t stand to kiss him anymore. The pain of knowing he would never be mine again started to sink in and, though I didn’t cry, I couldn’t help the sobs. My shoulders shook and I buried my face in his neck. He stopped any stroking and clawing of my back and just hugged me. So tight and yet, not tight enough.

“I’m sorry, Edward. You shouldn’t have had to feel like you had to do this. It’s ridiculous. I’m sorry,” said Alice from the couch.

“What do you mean?” asked Jazz. He knew something was going on, that Alice and I were in some form of cahoots. “What the fuck did you guys talk about when I wasn’t here?”

I shook my head and pushed him off. I wiped his taste off my lips on the back of my arm and went in search of my clothes. When I left, Jazz was staring at Alice, trying to read the plan as though it were written on her face. Nobody tried to stop me and I never found out what they said.

I saw them again at the rehearsal dinner. They seemed happy and nervous and adorable. I didn’t shake Jasper’s hand or kiss Alice’s cheek hello as I normally would. I didn’t bring a date, though one or two of my female friends had offered to accompany me for show. I’d turned into one of those one-night stands who transferred all their frustration on a partner they’d never see again. Sure, sometimes it made for good, angsty sex. In my case, it ended with me running out of a room before the guy decided he wanted to cuddle, just to end up sobbing in the bathroom after they left.

The dinner was a dinner. I was just another guest. I mingled with Alice’s gay cousin, who was kind of a heartthrob, as it turned out, the kind that looked best in black and white photos. But, he was only recently out of the closet. It’d be like dating a virgin and those things never went well, not with my level of experience. We flirted and fucked after dinner and we never called each other again. Ah, the good ole times.

We kissed at the wedding against a wall of the church, which didn’t make me feel nearly as guilty as it should have. It was an act of defiance from someone who knew they’d never see a heaven in this life or the next. I even winked at the priest on the way to the church. They put Jazz and me in another little room behind the altar so Jazz could get ready. I was doing the best man thing and trying to calm him down but, right now, it just involved me sitting in a chair in a corner and listening to him freak out about kids and the future while he fixed his tie for the hundredth time.

There was a half hour till the wedding and all I kept thinking was how long it’d take me to bleed out if I stabbed myself in the neck. I didn’t care about kids and marriage, never even considered the possibility. I especially didn’t want to hear Jasper talking about all this but I also knew he just didn’t want to talk about us. After all, we’d left things in an awkward state.

“Don’t leave me for a second, ‘kay?” he pleaded for the third time since this morning.

“Like glue, Jazz,” I droned. “I’ll stick to you like glue.”

He rolled his eyes at me in the mirror. I got fed up with his jittery attitude and stood from my chair. I must have looked furious because he instantly tensed and his hands dropped to his side, eyes wide.

“Would you leave that damn tie alone? Did you ever think that maybe I’d rather be out there flirting with Alice’s cousin?” I said, throwing my arms in the air. “Or… I dunno. Anything else!”

“No one’s stopping you!” he shot back, spinning on his heel to face me directly. “You’re the one who agreed to be best man, you ass! Go! Go get laid!”

I smirked though still obviously irritated. “I don’t want to get laid, Jazz! Would you just stop fidgeting? You’re annoying the shit out of me.”

I expecting him to go right back to the mirror to continue adjusting his tie but he didn’t. He just stood there, waiting for me to say something or do something. I furrowed my brow and tried to distract him by waving off my previous statements and going to fix his tie myself, a fake smile plastered on my face. There was no hope for the stupid tie. He’d wrinkled it to an inch of death. I took it off and he closed his eyes instinctively. Last time I’d done that, well, it’d been a completely different situation.

I pulled off my own and looped it around his neck. I spun him around and we faced the mirror to . His eyes were the saddest I’d ever seen. Mine were worse, just torched sockets. It looked like neither of us had slept in years. Grief had a way of doing that. I got to work on his tie. His hands reached up to my arm, pulling down my hands once the tie was well done.

“You won’t have a tie then,” he whispered sadly, staring at our reflection.

I smirked and shrugged. “I look better like this. I doubt Alice will complain. Between you and me, I think she likes the chest hair.”

He made a frown like he was about to gag but didn’t. I doubt he was paying attention to me. His mind was on the girl waiting for him at the altar and her face when she came and the way she spoke so rarely yet so passionately. Hell, I’d have fallen in love with her too. It was getting easier to let him go the more I liked Alice. I was just trying to convince myself she was the better mate. It didn’t matter what Jasper thought, who he loved. He deserved the best and that wasn’t me.

I tried to pull my hand away but he didn’t let go. “Jazz, what are you—”

He spun around and his teary eyes met mine. “Tell me again,” he pleaded desperately. “Tell me why you left. I can’t go up to that altar unless you tell me.”

I scoffed though his expression and the intensity of his eyes were getting to me too. “We weren’t working,” I lied.

“What does that even mean?” he shouted, pushing me back. I didn’t stumble. I saw it coming.

“It means… It means we just didn’t have chemistry.” Now I knew he couldn’t possibly believe me. If we had anything at all, any reason to stay together, it was our chemistry. I still felt it now, the shivers down my spine as he ran his hands up my torso.

“Tell me the truth!” I winced at his tone. I wanted him to move on, not to hate me. He was forcing me into this.

“What truth, Jazz?” I pushed back. He did stumble and I fought with myself not to reach for him, to steady him. It was my nature to protect him and keep him close, even if it meant sabotaging any other relationship he might ever have had or any other chance to be truly happy.

“Tell me you don’t love me that way!”

What little pieces of my heart that remained floating about my chest were now dissolved completely. “I don’t fucking love you,” I mumbled through gritted teeth. It didn’t hurt nearly enough to say it. By then, I hated him and myself to such a degree that I would have said anything to rid myself of the pain. “You were just another fuck. You were a conquest to be had, my first love. Fucking you rid me of unresolved tension. It was cathartic. It was not, however, love. Love is waiting for you out there in a white dress. Go! Just go!”

He barely blinked, barely reacted. It was as though I’d read him too well, given in to too many of his preexisting doubts, and he had no choice but to believe me. I had finally gotten my final goodbye because this time, he had no reason to come after me.

I didn’t wait for him to say anything back, not that it looked like he had any intention of talking ever again. I stormed out through the back of the church, ignoring stares and whispers as I always did. I felt like I was a mouse running through a maze with now end. I finally reached the outside and stopped to breathe, leaning forward onto my knees and praying I didn’t fall forward and pass out in front of my best friend’s wedding.

I gave my heart a moment, wiped away what loose tears and sweat mingled on my cheeks, and went to walk to my car when I saw Alice and her entire wedding entourage gaping at me by the limo. I didn’t know what to say except, “I’m sorry, Alice. I thought I could stand there but I can’t. Forgive me. He asked too much.”

Again, I didn’t let her respond. I heard the pitter-patter of her heels as she ran through the side entrance behind the altar. I walked to the lot, found my car and, with shaking hands, drove myself home.

The moment I closed my door behind me, I found myself free of the shock and allowed myself to break down without the need for restraint. There was no one here to judge me for crying or for falling in love with the wrong person. There was no one here to make it worse but there was also no one to make it better and it felt like whatever emotional collapse was making my knees weak would never cease and I would die in my bed.

What made it worse was that I prayed nobody would care and he could just go on living without me.

-

Someone knocked on my door around 7:00. I ignored it but it didn’t go away. I hadn’t changed out of my suit but it was now wrinkled and unbuttoned and hanging off me like I was the world’s saddest coat rack.

After fifteen minutes of light knocking, I got up and dragged myself to the door. I expected it to be a random guy I might have made a plan with while drunk. I often had such “appointments” but I didn’t remember making any. I hadn’t really been out drinking since I broke up with Jazz. I preferred to drink by myself, usually in the dark in front of my TV, completely nude for better access.

I expected it to be Alice, screaming at me for not sitting through the whole wedding. For a second, I even thought it was her cousin, looking for a post-reception hook-up. I wouldn’t have sent him away.

I never, not once, thought it’d be Jazz, looking just as shabby as me in the same black suit. His hair was raked back almost convulsively like he did when he thought about things deeply. He looked at me like I was a mirage, trying to find the reality behind the mess of colors and twisting worlds. And then he found me and his eyes widened, bloodshot but still beautiful.

I didn’t move. I expected another argument so I didn’t even speak, just waiting for the words to hit me like raindrops. I closed my eyes, bracing myself.

That’s when I felt the sharp crack of fist on cheek and I was sent tumbling back. I heard the close slam behind him and whirled around, holding my aching cheekbone. How I didn’t have a black eye in the morning, it was a miracle. Perhaps it was the shock of being struck by someone as meek as Jazz that hurt my pride much more than the physical force hurt my cheek. I didn’t curse, didn’t fight back as I normally would.

If Jazz wanted to beat me till I bled, he was entitled to in my book, but I knew he never would. I knew he just needed that one release and then he’d be done with me. I owed him a lot more than a little punch to the face could ever equate.

“You fucking liar!” he screamed, pacing in front of the door.

I went to sit on my couch’s armrest, avoiding his deathly stare. “Why aren’t you on your honeymoon, Jazz?” I said, practically scolding him for turning his back on the perfect life I’d built for him.

“Alice saw you go. She came looking for me, apologizing for what you both had done. She thought you’d told me!”

I groaned and covered my eyes. When I took my hand away, I expected to wake from the nightmare, that there could have been some way for him to disappear so I wouldn’t have to explain why I did it.

But, as luck would have it, it had already been done for me. “She told me why you did it,” he said, his voice as soft as his caresses.

I sighed with relief and fought the urge to cry out of exhaustion. Not being with Jazz was almost as emotionally taxing as being with him. “I did it for a reason, Jazz. So you could have a better life.”

He cackled madly, out of breath. “What the hell made you think being with her was any better than being with you?” he asked.

He paused for a moment and I could see the answers filing inside him already, one after another like dominoes. There was nothing he could ask that he didn’t already know the answer to. He’d been inside my head for years and in my bed for months but it was enough to make him an extension of my whole soul and self. That boy would be in my heart for the rest of my life.

“Did you mean what you said today?” he whispered and I realized he’d walked to me till we were almost nose to nose. He warmed my chest with his proximity. I knew he knew the answer to that, just how he knew deep down my goodbye two months ago had been a lie. He wanted me to say it and I had no more reason to lie or to hold back.

“You know damn well that I’d run in front of a train if it’d stop me from loving you. But you know it wouldn’t. Nothing ever will, Jazz.”

I avoided his eyes, telling his lips instead. They curled up into the tiniest smirk before he took that final step forward. His lips pressed to mine and it felt intensely satisfying, like putting the final piece into a lifelong jigsaw puzzle. His icy fingertips caressed my aching cheeks and I found my somewhat limp arms finding enough life in them to wrap around him, locking him to me forever.

The kiss became desperate, slow but never-ending. There was so much to be said but nothing that couldn’t be better expressed in bed. It was how I knew to show him how much I loved him, why I let him go the way I did.

We didn’t speak for two days. We didn’t leave my apartment. Nobody came looking for us and we disconnected the phone. On the third day, I woke up to find him dressed in my clothes. He sat at my dinner table with a cup of coffee, staring at two airline tickets on the table. I raised an eyebrow at him but he explained before I could ask.

“They were under the door when I came to get coffee. They’re from Alice. Second one’s in your name.”

I walked over and picked up my coffee mug from the kitchen counter. Whatever happened between us these last few months seemed to have been erased by two nights of fucking. It was a blank slate. I didn’t care where those tickets went. I didn’t care about the implications of spending the rest of my life with one man. I already couldn’t imagine waking up to another face, another smile. I couldn’t imagine other hands touching me or having other sweet lips on mine. I couldn’t promise him we’d make it forever or that I wouldn’t be tempted by others in the long run.

He knew this too, could read it on my face as I stared at the airline tickets. I took them in my hands, sat down beside him, and slowly turned to him. He waited for my answer with desperate eyes. If I agreed to go on that trip, it meant I agreed to leave this apartment with him for the first time. It meant we’d try for a happily ever after, a forever I always thought imaginary.

“Forever is a long time, Jazz,” I reminded him softly. “I can’t promise forever.”

He just mirrored my usual cocky smirk and answered, “Yes, but someone once taught me… to not try at all would always be the greater crime.”

All I knew was that to try with anyone else would have been a pointless endeavor. We were more than sex and more than beautiful lies. We were based in trust and love and understanding and a friendship I could never even begin to define. There was not a piece of him I didn’t want or a moment I didn’t need him by my side.

“I’m not asking for forever. You know I’d grant you a second chance, a third or fourth… Just promise me no more stupid games. Please. And no more blind decisions based on stupid notions on love,” he begged, squeezing my hand. He already knew he’d won whatever argument I was having with my conscience.

“No more games,” I answered and leaned in for a kiss from the only lips I’d ever taste again.

I was inspired. What can I say? Why else would someone write 10,000-words-worth of gay porn? Lol. Uhm, I'm horribly embarrassed to post it under my usual penname but since it's based off true, personal events, I might as well. It's very much about loving more than one person at a time, something I truly believe in, and giving up the person so they'll be truly happy. A second part is working about in my head but I'll wait until after the contest ends. Story's below the cut. I'll be posting on Twilighted soon though I'll probably avoid fanfiction.net due to content. We'll see. Comment, yes yes? 
 

 

SLASH BACKSLASH ONE-SHOT CONTEST

Story Name: Modern Affairs
Pen name: NeuroticMuse413
Pairing: Jasper/Edward, J/E/A
Disclaimer: Don’t own Twilight.
To see other entries in the “SLASH BACKSLASH” contest, please visit the C2: http ://www. fanfiction. net/c2/74941/3/0/1/

SUMMARY: A drunken night in Rome breaks up a lifelong friendship. Four years later, Jasper is about to get married and asks his once best friend, Edward, to be the best man. Edward’s refusal leads to a life-altering revelation and sparks a dangerous affair. M.

WARNING!MATURE READERS ONLY. It deals with homosexual sex between men and offers ridiculously descriptive sex scenes. There’s also a slight rape scene, though not really. No one is being forced and there’s no violence. They’re just… well, not aware it’s happening until a bit later and join in. If you are uncomfortable with any of these situations, PLEASE DO NOT READ FURTHER.

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“Love who you’re with because of who they are and who they aspire to be, not what they can do for you, where they come from, or how well they can love you back.”

-----

It was easy to share my life with Jasper. He’d been my neighbor, my friend, my brother to some extent. When my parents died and we were cast off into the adult world, we became the only family each other had. And while I understood why Jasper never took the role on quite as seriously as I did, I never felt more hope than that week we spent in Italy just after our first year of college.

 

It wasn’t an exchange program or study abroad or anything. It was two guys who worked their asses off (in my case, quite literally) to save up enough money for the trip. He asked me once, over tequila shots, where the money came from. I never answered and he never asked again.

We were 19 and still beautifully naïve, Jasper especially. He’d never been in love and was looking for some Italian jailbait to pretend for a night. He could have gotten any of the girls at Roamina with a wink and a drunken smirk but he didn’t know these things. I’d never taught him and, as always, he never asked. He thought that if he sat at a bar and looked sullen and lonely, a girl would just naturally walk up to him and ask him back to her place.

There was no mirror behind the bar so he couldn’t see what I was doing to ensure such a miracle didn’t happen. He was hunched over the bar on his little stool, but I stood beside him. I leaned my body into him so my crotch was just up to his hip and even went as far as resting my chin on his shoulder for a few seconds under the guise of a noisy room. He wouldn’t be able to hear me if I didn’t lean in, or see the way I looked at him with lustful eyes. He didn’t notice but every girl who even glanced at him got the hint.

Jasper was taken. He just had no idea.

I practically force-fed him three more vodka tonics and a rum and Coke. I had twice that but alcohol didn’t hit me like it got to him. The boy was so country-fried steak. I had never grown accustomed to Texas life, no matter how long ago I moved to Dallas. I was a New York fag and damn proud of it, to anyone but the only person who really mattered.

My eyes told my whole life story, and they were aimed lovingly and passionately at the side of Jasper’s face as I carried him back to our hotel room.

I’d managed to get enough money to rent us a moderately-sized room, a palace compared to the hostels I’d seen on the way there. For a couple of broke college kids, we were doing more than okay. I’d asked for a single king-sized bed and told Jazz all the other rooms were taken. Tourist season. I wondered how many more opportunistic lies I could get away with before Jazz realized the plan brewing dangerously in my mind.

I set him down on his side of the bed and backed away. I sat in a chair on the other side of the room and stared at him from afar, leaning forward onto my knees as I waited for him to fall asleep. Jazz was a heavy sleeper (had to be with all those kids running around his house growing up) and all the drinks had him in a semi-catatonic state by the time I dropped him on his pillow like a sack of potatoes.

I could have had my way with him two hours prior but I just sat in a chair, looking on as he stirred and mumbled incoherently about groceries and bad chess.

The first night, I just couldn’t do it.

The plan had been simple, subconsciously in the works since I was a twelve-year-old perv wanking in my room. It was always the same fantasy, playing in my head like a movie. I’d drug him somehow, undress him in some dark basement somewhere, fuck him, and leave forever. I didn’t expect it’d be so hard. I couldn’t do it because he was also my friend, an unexpected and beautiful byproduct of my lustful teenage years.

And, even though I was 19 and lived in a world where sodomy no longer had such a negative connotation, I always felt like a monster for wanting someone so desperately when I knew he would only reject me if he knew the truth.

We had five more nights in Rome and every night, I tried again. Every night, I failed, and it became more and more evident that Jasper didn’t deserve someone like me in his life. He deserved the miracle girl in the bar, the ones I’d been fending off with body language and deathly glares behind his back.

It was on the final night before we headed back to Dallas, after a week of museums and bars and museums and bars and museums and bars, that I heard the disappointment in his voice as he slept. By then, I had raccoon eyes and a lagging shuffle where a confident strut had once been but it didn’t matter. He’d said my name in the most loving, drunken voice I had ever heard. I was by his bedside before I could even command my feet to move. I thought he’d woken and wanted something but he was just murmuring.

I began to fantasize as I’d done for so many years. I ran gentle fingertips around the edges of his face and over his lips. He smiled and his hand flew blindly to my knee on the bed. I whimpered uncontrollably. I’d always been told I was a loud fuck but I didn’t really take much stock in it before that point. The whimper could have woken a dead man but not my Jasper, not after all that tequila.

He said my name against and his hand started to creep up my leg, towards my crotch. I covered my mouth to keep from squealing with a mix of happiness and surprise. I had held him before. I’d even playfully tackled him during a game of flag football and held his hand at high school graduation to give him the courage to walk across that final stage. I should have stopped there, should have cherished those moments when they were still beautiful and stolen. But I didn’t.

He scooted over in bed, his eyes closed, and started to undo his belt with one lazy hand. I moved his hand away and undid the big Texas-shaped buckle myself, smirking. He wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that in Dallas but he thought Italian woman needed more reason to pay attention to his crotch so he brought it along. Being the last night, he thought he needed the extra help. He hadn’t. It was clear in those tight, low black jeans that he had all the extra equipment he needed to make a girl happy.

I ran my hand over his crotch just to feel the shape of it under the thick denim. He moaned softly and I almost came in my pants. I quickly withdrew my hand and waited another moment. Maybe I wouldn’t get my fantasy but I could still get a modicum of fun out of the evening. I unzipped his jeans and started to pull down his pants. He seemed half-awake and began to complain but I just shushed him as though he were a child and told him, “Don’t worry, Jazz. I’m just trying to make you more comfortable. You can go back to sleep now.”

He nodded, hid his beautiful blue eyes with the back of his arm, and lifted his hips up so I could slide the pants off. They were tight and it took a bit of painful pulling but he didn’t seem to wake, not even after that. He trusted me too much.

I sighed deeply and stared at his white boxers. They had little red polka-dots throughout and I couldn’t help but chuckle softly. I thought it was just ridiculous that my own dick would spring to action so quickly when I had seen him in considerably less clothing in our high school locker room. I suppose, back then, I had only been allowed to look, not touch. Now, there was no one to stop me and tell me I was wrong and sick and perverted for wanting Jasper so much.

I ran the palm of my hand over his crotch gently, testing my own strength to stop. He didn’t even murmur. I ran it again with more pressure. He was still asleep. It felt even more wrong with every layer of clothing I pulled off and every caress I was able to get away with.

My fingers played with the rim of his boxers, pulling down to catch a peek of the goods. Again, I gritted my teeth until my jaw ached. I straddled him carefully on the bed and pulled down down down until they were at his ankles. From there, he kicked them off himself and I took it as a tiny incentive to continue.

I ran my hands up the inside of his thighs, craving the feel of his skin under my fingertips, and pulled his legs further apart. He smiled but didn’t move. I wondered if he thought he was dreaming, of whose face he put on my body. I didn’t care who he thought about. I just prayed he didn’t remember and, if he did, that he would one day find the strength to forgive me for my one offense.

I plunged into the act and gripped his shaft in my fist. He jerked suddenly. I paused again before starting to stroke up and down his length, slowly at first. With my other hand, I began to unbuckle my own pants. I stopped to throw off my t-shirt and it quickly dawned on me that we were both naked, in our bed, and that I was going much farther than I originally intended.

The feel of his slowly-growing erection wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to taste him. I cupped his balls with one hand and, kneeling in the space between his opened thighs, bent down to lick his tip. It was a timid taste. After all the liquor he’d had, he wasn’t going to stay erect for very long, if at all. His blood was probably 60 percent alcohol.

He tasted salty and smooth, though he hadn’t even begun to leak anything at all. What I wouldn’t give for a wet dream so I could really taste him. I hadn’t hoped for much. I waited another moment, constantly looking up, trying to spot changes in his smile. There were none, he still smirked sadly and it broke my heart but I kept on.

I wrapped my lips around the head of his penis and waited another second before sliding down. I was careful about teeth. I knew how much that shit hurt but I didn’t stop until I could feel him in the back of my throat. I gagged a little but quickly pulled back up. That’s when he shivered and gave a gentle thrust of his hips, insisting I take all I could. My lips couldn’t reach the base but that didn’t stop me from trying.

I began to suck and lick and my left hand reached down to my own cock, now in full salute. I could feel my orgasm coming and I liked to think Jasper could feel his in some part of his unconscious mind. I wanted to give him the release he’d come looking for, even if I wasn’t what he wanted. I reached into the bedside drawer for the box of condoms I’d hidden and took a moment of attention off his dick to rip one open with one hand and my teeth. I slid it expertly over my own cock just in time for my release.

Kneeling on the bed, it was hard to keep my balance and I leaned my hand on his hipbone, now positive he wouldn’t wake. I jerked and groaned at full volume, followed by a laugh. Maybe I couldn’t get Jazz off but just being so close and so naked with him made up for a lot. A part of me never expected I’d get this far.

I certainly never expected his hand would reach for the wrist of the hand upon his hipbone. I didn’t think he’d have such a grip left in him but I had a way of underestimating Jazz. I always thought he was the innocent little boy I was taking advantage of, a thought that had made me hate myself for years prior. Before I could even revel in my release, he had rolled me over and rested atop me. His eyes were half open, delirious, but certainly intent on mine. His expression was so tranquil and yet so sad that I felt like crying.

Still, he reached over to the box of condoms spilled all over the bedside table and slipped one on, ripping the package with his teeth as I’d done. I smirked, trying to convince myself that he was truly awake and willing. I slipped it on quickly. It was lubricated but I knew it wasn’t going to do much. We’d need more if he was going to pummel into me the way I’d imagined but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t saying a thing. I was just going to stare up at him like the horny, lovesick idiot I was and wait for him to find my asshole.

It didn’t take him long, which surprised me. Holding the same wrist, he flipped me around and was soon face to face with my ass. He had to know what he was doing, I thought. He had to. But I didn’t say a thing. I got on all fours and whispered, “Do it. Just fuck me.”

When his strong hands grabbed hold of my ass cheeks and pulled them apart, I thought I was going to come again. The guilt was dissipating and then, he just plunged into me as though to punish me. He didn’t even bother stretching me, preparing me for his cock. He just dove in and slowly but surely, he was inside me. All the way inside me. I gritted my teeth again to hide the urge to scream. The pain was only momentary and then it was hard to imagine him not being inside me. He paused as though reconsidering it before pulling out and plunging into me again. This time, I damned my restraint to hell and gasped and groaned and called out his name.

He came and quickly pulled out, collapsing in bed beside me. I fell face down onto his pillow, continuing to gasp madly. I avoided his eyes and faced away, knowing too well the expression I’d find. I finally gulped away all the burgeoning tears and turned my head on the pillow. I came face to face with a pair of eyelids and the gentle rhythm of sleep. It didn’t stop me from pretending though. His arm rounded my waist and I smiled the whole night, just watching him sleep.

That was four years ago. It was one of the last times I saw Jasper. When he woke up, he was naked in bed and I was nowhere to be found. I stumbled in later, pretending to have just left the bar. He looked at me wide-eyed and held his head of short, curly blonde hair as though trying to stop the obviously migraine from leaving him blind, deaf, and with permanent brain damage.

“What the fuck happened last night?” he asked me timidly, avoiding my eyes. I wondered if he remembered but I mentioned nothing of the act, not even my usual sexual innuendoes that I managed to fit into every conversation.

“You ran off with some chick and left me there, man. By the state of the sheets, I imagine the Texas belt worked,” I answered with a fake laugh. I went to pack what little I’d brought and we left. We went back to school and we kept coming up with more and more reasons not to see each other. We were busy doing this, studying for that… it went on for years and, though we never quite lost touch because such a thing would surely kill us, I had effectively ruined the most loving relationship of my life.

This is why, when I got his email to meet up four years later, I didn’t hesitate for the chance of a tiny glimpse of those blue eyes or dark blonde hair again, or the lanky limbs and chiseled muscles I’d looked for in all other men before and after Rome.

I arrived a half hour early to the café. I wasn’t the same mess anymore. I didn’t show up an hour late to a meeting anymore because I was stoned or hung over and I didn’t wear the same ratty old band t-shirts and ripped-up jeans. My hair wasn’t long and filthy all the time, though still hopelessly untidy, and my eyes no longer held the puppy dog love I’d once coveted so deeply. I knew very well that after that meeting, I’d be saying goodbye again and it might be another couple years. I’d accepted it.

I was an architect now. I had a little firm I loved and a steady income so I didn’t have to depend on my past favors. I knew Jazz was in a competing firm and figured his bosses wanted to get some info from me or he wanted to talk blueprints. We often texted each other technical questions, nothing personal. I didn’t know if he’d found someone though I thought I hoped he had. I had a mail boy named Mike who I hated but was good for a Friday-night fuck on top of the copiers. Nobody could say I didn’t work late.

I expect Jazz would walk in with tubes full of plans and a large portfolio but he didn’t even have his usual backpack full of crap from college. He didn’t see or recognize me right away so I used the distraction to straighten out my coat and button-down shirt. I adjusted my black tie and, after a quick clearing of the throat for courage, waved at Jasper to come over.

He took a deep breath when he saw me stand and buried his hands in his jeans pockets. I was happy to see he’d changed too. He was the same tall, skinny thing but with ever so slightly broader shoulders and a neater haircut. No more Kurt Cobain locks. I kind of missed them, missed imagining how great it felt to run my hands through them unabashed.

He smiled at me and walked over, keeping a good two feet away from me as he shook my hand tightly. It already felt impersonal, too manly for my everyday taste. There had once been an era, before Rome, when he would have hugged and done the manly pats. Well, he patted. I’d just hold on a bit longer than I should have.

When he let go of my hand and slipped it back in his pocket, I waved to the little metal seat before mine and gestured him to sit. The silence quickly began but I could see something different already, not just in the physical. This was deeper. It was like his eyes were smiling without his lips’ consent and his posture just screamed a sort of self-assurance that only came with a steady relationship.

“Hey man,” I finally spoke. “What’d you want to talk about? You said it was big.”

Could he be coming out of the closet, maybe? I pondered. It was ridiculous, of course, but I didn’t care. One doesn’t get that posture from a relationship you have to constantly hide from the public. This was pride on his shoulder and shame on the other.

“Yea. But first, how are you doing? Still at Buckley’s?” he replied lamely, almost all trace of his accent gone.

I rolled my eyes and waved a waitress over. I ordered for us both because Jasper never changed his coffee preferences and turned my attention back to his face. “Spit it out already,” I commanded. I didn’t like to beat around the bush. “You know I’m still at Buckley’s and that I got that promotion last month because I texted you. You wanted to talk and drove half an hour to do so. So spill. You sick or something? You need money?”

He knew I would give him anything he wanted on the spot. He gulped and smiled, an odd combination to me but I could always make him smile even at inappropriate times. In high school, it was half the fun of biology class just to play with Jasper’s expressions during bad sex ed videos.

“I’ve got a favor, yea… I, uh, would like the honor of having you as my best man. At my wedding.”

As though that last part wasn’t obvious. My eyes slowly widened and my heart felt like it wanted to hammer my ribs to death until one or the other surrendered. “Wedding? What? To whom?”

He smiled brightly as he said her name. “Alice. She’s a designer friend of Rose’s. We met at a Christmas party. I was Rose’s date ‘cause sis hates fighting off the drunken married guys at those things and the rest is history. She helped me drag Rose home and she stayed for coffee.”

I chuckled. “Dear God, you actually managed to talk to a girl without setting yourself on fire.”

He wouldn’t it have found it so funny before but he did not. Because now he had Alice and he’d never need me again. He’d never beg for my company on lonely Friday nights or ask me advice or fuck me in his sleep in foreign hotel rooms. He’d have someone who could fulfill his every need, not just his drunken ones.

“Come on, man. I don’t have any other guy friends what with all my sisters and my work friends aren’t as close to me as you are. I wouldn’t even think of asking anyone else.”

He was begging. Why was he begging? I would have given him the fucking moon if he asked for it, even if I had to build my own rocket. He should have known that after all these years. I wouldn’t have even been in Rome if it weren’t for him. He was the one that liked all the old-school architecture. Give me a Gehry any day and I’ll come before I even walk in the door.

I was about to say yes when he opened his fucking mouth and continued begging, “Oh and you’ll love Alice’s roommate. She’s the bridesmaid and she’s super cute. Name’s Bella. She’s a librarian from Washington and she looks like a really awesome girl. I think you’d benefit from a girl like that, you know.”

I gaped, lips parted. It was insult enough that he asked me to practically give him away to some girl while I was doomed to spend a life of heartache and half-empty relationships. It was bad enough that he was allowed to parade around with the girl he loved, hold her, kiss her, in view of anyone without any fear whatsoever while I resorted to mail rooms and one-night stands.

But he was setting me up with a chick. He had never, in the ten years he knew me before Rome, ever seen me with a woman, never even seen me in a relationship. I knew it was irrational but I was angry at him for not knowing. He, who was supposed to be my closet friend, my brother, my one-time lover…

“Are you fucking serious?” I growled softly. The waitress brought us our coffee, saw my expression of angry disbelief, and scuttled right back to the kitchen.

“What do you mean?” he asked timidly, hiding his lips behind his coffee cup.

I shut my eyes and pretended I was alone, staring at myself in the mirror. It had been a mission to admit it to myself all those years ago. It was natural now. I forgot who I was with and just whispered, “I’m gay, Jazz. Why can’t you see that? Why don’t you ever see? My secret relationships, the way I fucking look at you, touch you…”

I opened my eyes and found an expressionless mask instead of a face. He set down his coffee and scooted his chair back like he couldn’t be far enough away from me. He bit his bottom lip and looked away, cross-armed and shaking his head.

“Fuck you,” he whispered and stood up. Before I could even say anything, he had stormed out the door.

-

It was the worst two days of my life. I drowned it in beer and spent the first night sitting on the front steps of my favorite museum before the police showed up and asked me to “move along.” The second day, I called in sick at work and spent it curled up in bed in my flannel pajama bottoms. I even pulled out old tapes of us in high school and middle school. I smiled at the sight of us two scrawny little things with our arms around each other’s shoulders. I cried when Jazz laughed, revealing a big metal smile. He was the ugliest, most awkward little thing in those braces but I still loved him. I loved him because he was mine and nobody else would ever see how wonderful he really was.

It took me those two days to realize I was being selfish all those years I kept him purposefully naïve, occupying his every free second. I avoided images of Rome, of the length of his cock or the way his hooded, sleepy eyes saw right through me.

I’d run out of beer and junk food so I put a gray old pea coat over my plaid pajama bottoms and slippers and walked off to the little Chinese market down the block. It was raining bullets but I didn’t care. I needed it to hurt. I needed to be punished, I knew, for ever closing those eyes and speaking the truth. It had been good, this slight distance. I still had him in my life, even if it was considerably less. Maybe after the wedding, we could have rekindled everything and I would have my best friend back. Maybe I would have found someone else and gotten over it.

When the rain finally slowed down enough for me to cross the street without catching pneumonia, I dragged myself back up to my apartment. The hallways and elevators were eerily empty. Most people were hiding inside from the rain. They didn’t see it often so it was natural for them to hide from it. The elevator doors opened and, as soon as I turned left into my hallway, I saw the little black mass huddled in front of my door.

It was Jasper, covered in a black trench coat, his arms hugging his knees to his chest. His hair was wet and stuck to his forehead but only lightly so he hadn’t caught the full force of the storm. That meant he’d been waiting outside my door for at least a half hour. I sighed, unsure of how to approach him, and walked slowly towards him. He didn’t even realize it was me until he came face to face with my plaid-clad knee caps. His eyes snapped up and I realized that not only had he been crying but he was trembling fiercely. Maybe he’d caught more of the storm than I thought.

I wasn’t cruel enough to let him suffer like that, not even after he rejected any shred of identity I had and turned me into this self-deprecating monster once again. We didn’t say anything. I furrowed my brow, partly from the confusion of seeing him there at all, and nodded towards the door. He shot right up onto his feet and I slammed my grocery bags into his chest to hold while I opened the door. I walked right in but he lingered in the hallway as though asking for permission to enter. I realized he’d never been in my new apartment. I’d lived there three years and I’d never let him in, always choosing to meet in restaurants and clubs and those ridiculous inauguration ceremonies our firms dragged us to when we first started.

I went up to him, took the bags from his arms, and said, “Come on.”

I had no plans of treating him kindly, not after the last two days of hell. He shut the door behind him and followed me to the kitchen. He sat down at the dinner table while I put away the beer and endless new supply of Pringles. I always got a barbecue-flavored one for him, even though I hated it, and tossed it to him. He caught it but set it gently down on the table instead of eating, completely ignoring the emotional symbolism. He still didn’t understand, even then. He knew I slept with, and loved, men. He didn’t know I slept with and loved him.

I groaned because I knew this was just going to be another awkward conversation. Then, he finally spoke and I was left speechless.

“I’m waiting for you to apologize,” he said and I felt like strangling him.

“You’re out of your fucking mind. I am what I am, Jazz. Don’t talk to me, run out on me… whatever. But I’m not lying to you anymore,” I defended, chugging down on a warm beer. It tasted like shit so I poured it out. I don’t even know why I bothered with domestic beer. “I’m not lying to anyone.”

He furrowed his brow and his eyes slowly trailed their way to me. “What?” he yelled, standing. I just leaned back against the kitchen counter, the empty beer bottle in hand. “I don’t fucking care what you are, you son of a bitch! I cared that you knew. You knew all these years and you never told me! I was your best friend, Edward. I feel like I don’t even know you!”

My anger started to dwindle. “You should have known,” I replied lamely.

He just laughed with hysterical, bloodshot eyes and shouted back, “Edward, you never once introduced me to anyone you were dating, never even mentioned the word gay! It’s not like you’re one of those guys on TV that wear the pink shirts and have a shrine to Barbara Streisand!”

I couldn’t help the chuckle. “Just don’t look at my DVD collection.” He didn’t find it that funny. I put the beer bottle gently into the sink (loud noises were not the friend of the headache threatening to drive me mad) and said, “Is that what you think a gay man does? Worship Barbara Streisand and wear pink?”

Something flashed across his eyes. A memory. He instantly looked away from me and fumbled with his fingers. He scratched his forehead, a nervous habit of his, and turned around. “I know what you do, Edward. You screw men.”

I nodded once. “Damn right. I love to fuck them. I love to wake up to them. I love it when they stick their hands down my pants in movie theaters and I love sucking cock on my knees on the floors of club bathrooms. And I would have given all that up just for you to know how I felt and for you to feel the same!”

I knew something was wrong when he didn’t seem repulsed or stormed off again. I wasn’t letting him go again without telling him everything, at least confessing my love for him. It had been fourteen fucking years of friendship, fourteen years of pining for a man I could never have.

“I knew,” he whispered, looking down at his feet. “At least, I think I did. You see, I had this dream once. Of you and me, and for ten years it’s all I see when I go to bed, when I’m with Alice. And I need to know—”

I cut him off right there because I couldn’t get my hopes up. “Rome,” I blurted out, eyes shut tight. I could hear him walk around the dinner table towards me but I didn’t move, arms tightly crossed over my chest. I didn’t know what to do with them.

“Was it real?” he asked, his voice dangerously close.

I nodded. “I’m so sorry. I knew we’d be parting soon. Look how different our lives are after just four years. But I loved you and I’d wanted you for so long that I didn’t care that you didn’t want it too. I’m sorry.”

A trembling hand rested over my heart. I dropped my arms and opened my eyes. Jasper was standing a foot away, crying. He shook his head and said, “No. That’s not how I remember it.”

I realized then what he meant, how he finished the act. He must have been awake but posed too many possibilities I wasn’t ready for. What if he’d wanted it too?

“I’m not gay,” he quickly corrected.

I shrugged. “One night with me doesn’t change who you are, Jazz. Even when you thought it was a dream, you still met Alice. You still fell in love.”

“Alice…” he echoed. I cautiously put a firm hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “I love Alice.”

“I’m sure you do.” I was sure. I saw his eyes, his composure in that café. “And I’m sure she’ll make you very happy. Just don’t ask me to stand up there beside you and watch you get claimed like that. Please. I would do anything for you but don’t ask me that.”

I must have been crying because my image of Jasper started to fuzzy up. I didn’t wipe the tear away. That would mean acknowledging it existed at all and men did not cry. It’s how I’d been raised.

“I love Alice,” he whispered again, completely ignoring my statement. I realized it was more for him than for me. He reached up and wiped the tear away, bringing it up to his lips to taste. I froze. I’d never seen him quite so open, so close. “I love Alice… but she doesn’t know me like you do.”

Something gathered at my throat because I couldn’t get the words to sound right. “Nobody knows you like I do.”

He nodded in agreement. It wasn’t just a cheesy line. It was a fact, undeniable. He brought a hand up to caress my cheek and I couldn’t help myself. I clutched his fingers with my left hand and grabbed the back of his neck with my right, slamming his lips to mine.

At first, his lips were reluctant, stationary. Then, as though the memory of that night in Rome were coursing through him all over again, he let his hands wander inside my coat and his lips parted, welcoming the kiss. I brought his hand to my heart on my bare chest. He was trembling so terribly that it almost felt like kissing a vibrator. His whole body convulsed against mine and we’d barely moved off the kitchen counter.

I took what little of the kiss I’d expected and pushed him off. “I’m sorry,” I squeaked, trying to recapture my breath. “All I ever seem to do is take advantage.”

Jazz gulped and brought his free hand to his lips. His eyes were wide as saucers and I couldn’t help smooth the sticky tendrils of hair back off his forehead. I smiled at him lovingly, just ecstatic to have him in my arms like that, his hand over my heart. Finally, he could feel how I felt in full force. Well, not exactly. At least, not yet.

“I’m not saying no,” he finally managed to blurt out, swallowing down a huge dose of guilt.

“You don’t have to. I’m saying no for you.”

He shook his head quickly, splashing me with water off his hair. “You don’t get it Edward,” he said with a new conviction. “You’re such a self-deprecating ass that you’d never consider I might want it too. I’m not saying I’m giving up all I have. I’m just saying I don’t want to leave this apartment without knowing completely, without a doubt, what it’s like to be loved by you.”

I knew everything about Jasper. He was an open book, more or less. I didn’t expect he’d know everything about me as well. After all, he’d missed the fact that I was gay. But, as I kept reminding myself, that was not all there was to me. I was a maze of emotions and twisted logic. I was self-deprecating, that was for sure, but I was also loving and devoted and I wondered if Jazz saw all that beneath that façade I’d worn for years.

Something about his smile told me he did. It was the way he looked at me, like something had clicked inside him and he could now see all the love my eyes held only for him. And, what’s more, his love mirrored my own.

I took his hand like we were childhood sweethearts and pulled him towards the bedroom down the hall. The bed was unmade and still a little warm from all my fetal positioning the last twelve hours. We stood side my side, staring down at the sheets. His hands were still trembling.

I turned to him. “You’re cold.”

“I’m terrified,” he confided with a breathless laugh.

“Of what?”

“Of what this might mean. About me. About us.”

I let of his hand and walked up behind him. I pulled his coat off and folded it up a bit before throwing it onto my chair by my architect’s desk. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans below that stuck to his skin with water, tracing all the muscles of his back. I slowly but firmly ran my hands down his back to the rim of his shirt. I slid my hands beneath and started to pull it up over his head. He lifted his arms in the air and the shirt came right off.

It hadn’t been this easy in Rome. I didn’t have to keep pausing every few minutes. I could be myself, the confident sexual persona I had built after years of anonymous or meaningless sex. I had once blamed Jasper for not being able to find someone to love. I never realized that maybe all those encounters were just meant to prepare me for him. He needed someone experienced to guide him through. It might as well have been his first time and the idea had me smiling.

I wrapped my arms around his waist from behind, going to unzip his pants, when his hands stopped mine. He gulped but I could tell by the way he shoved my hand down his pants to grab his erection that he wasn’t afraid of the act itself. After all, he’d done it once before, whether he remembered it well or not. His body never forgot and, unlike me, he didn’t hate himself for wanting to remember everything again.

He gasped when I started to caress his cock, not even grasping him the right way. “Go slowly,” he pleaded but I knew how fast he liked it. This time, I had no regrets or guilt, not even knowing Alice was waiting somewhere for him to get back, probably worried that he’d gotten caught in the storm.

I pulled my hand from his pants and turned him around, just to see his face again and knew this was real. Every emotion that crossed his eyes was new to me. He was seeing the real me and I was seeing the scared boy I first met in middle school. It was deliciously endearing. I looked down at my coat and pajama bottoms. I gave him a look that begged him to take it all off. He needed to do it for himself, to gain the confidence to come back.

His hands found my collar and pushed the gray coat back off my shoulders. It fell to the ground unceremoniously. Next, his eyes fell on the elastic waistband on my pajama bottoms. His hands slid under the waistband and cupped my ass, pressing my crotch to his. I was just a bit taller so I had to bend over a little to kiss him. This time, it was like a mutual spark was reignited and before I knew it, our pants were puddles on the floor and his erection was rubbing with mine. Our arms were wrapped around each other, touching, exploring… Every sensation felt new and heightened by the emotional intimacy we’d shared all those years.

My kisses led me to his ear and I couldn’t help but whisper, “You have no idea how beautiful you are to me.”

He didn’t say anything, still uncomfortable with such a level of honesty, but grabbed my ass hard enough to draw blood. I must admit. I liked it. He wasn’t soft and timid anymore, despite his inexperience with other men. He was methodical but certain of each step once he did it once, desperate to learn. Of course. I had learned my method from him, just applied it to different areas. Like the bit of neck just below his ear which I now kissed and nibbled.

I was tired of foreplay, wanted to dive into the full man. I wanted to tell him but was afraid that such forward instructions might turn him off. He preferred being in control in Rome. He saw my reluctance to speak in my hesitant kisses over his chest and stopped me. He could read me without me ever having to speak, knew every emotion in my book and how to draw out the right ones.

“What is it?” he asked, starting to wonder just what doubts were going through my mind now.

I smirked. “I don’t know how to tell you what I want.”

“How much communication do you need? Last time you did this, I was drunk shitless.”

I laughed and agreed. So, I leaned into his ear and whispered, “I want to wrap your legs around my neck and suck you off till you can’t stop the spasms or calling out my name. And I want to ram you and make you come at the same time. And I want you to tell me everything you want and everything you feel, all the time.”

His cheeks turned fire red but I’d learn later that it was pure arousal rather than embarrassment. I could have said anything and he would not have been embarrassed. It was just him and me in a room, I reminded myself. The goal was ultimate pleasure. How one got there was irrelevant.

So, I pushed him back on the bed and kissed my way up from his right knee to his inner thigh to his balls and lifted them up to kiss his opening. He shivered but I only laughed. I remembered he’d never been penetrated and decided to start slow. I got a new condom off my floor because they were always thrown on one surface of the house or the other, hidden in cookie jars and beneath papers and welcome mats. I rarely used the bed.

I slapped one on either of us, not that I wasn’t completely sure Jasper was as clean, if not cleaner, than I, and raised a finger to my lips. He saw where this was going and drew up his knees, spreading them. I suddenly had the most beautiful view a gay man could ever want. I licked my finger and walked it up and down his opening before gently running it inside. He let out a low sting of profanities and arched his back immediately. He lifted his knees up even further off the bed, giving me full access. One finger still inside him, I reached for the bottle of lube under the bed and started pouring it over my hand. I wanted at least four fingers in before attempting it with my cock. I was hard as a rock and certainly wider, not longer, than he was.

With the lube, it was easier. I was quickly three fingers in but he had already begun to convulse with orgasm. I sped up my jabbing motions and wrapped my hand around his cock, running it up and down as I entered him from below. He came with only three fingers and I figured that was enough to try full cock. I stood on my knees and hooked his legs up on my shoulders. I moved my cock in place and maneuvered the head in. I pushed in slowly and delighted in the way his cock and balls bounced with my jabbing motions. He reached down and grabbed himself as I began to speed up my poundings. The apartment echoed with the slaps of skin to skin. Faster and faster and faster…

When we both finished, I went to pull out but he stopped me and asked me to wait there for a moment. “I like being filled by you,” he confessed.

I quickly regained my arousal but did as ordered and stayed. I lowered his legs around me and fell forward, exhausted, onto his chest. He stroked my hair without a single reservation, smiling all the while. This was the most loved I’d felt since he wrapped his arms around my bare waist in Italy and fell asleep. Or passed out. My memory falters somewhat on the event though the feeling it gave was still crystal clear in my heart.

His breathing was quickened and his abdomen clenched and unclenched beneath me so I asked, “You okay?”

He nodded, staring up wildly at the ceiling. I made a note to myself to put a mirror up there if he ever decided to do it again. “That was… uh, wow.”

“Wow? That’s it? You’re such a product of the nineties. Use your words, love.”

He continued to stare up at the ceiling, arms limp on the bed around us, and whispered, “That was the most intense experience of my life.”

I snorted. “Might I remind you of the first day you discovered porn. That was pretty big. They had to call your mom to bring you a change of pants at summer camp ‘cause you used them all up in like a week.”

He burst out with laughter, the most I’d heard from him since long before Rome. “No, jerkward. I meant more like my first kiss or the first time I went to the country with Dad and saw the open night sky.”

I smiled, suddenly reminded how much history we truly had and the horrible mistake I’d made keeping my feelings to myself all these years. Even if he was bisexual and even if I only had him for these little trysts, I was fucking content. Or content fucking. Whichever you prefer.

I gave him a moment to rest and control his heart before we started up again. And again. And again. I kissed him for a whole five minutes at the door. The next door neighbor came out walk her dog and caught us. She saw me with a different guy every other week but she saw the difference in this one, in the way we wrapped our arms around each other and smiled and caressed each other’s faces slowly as though unsure everything was real.

I expected Jasper to freak out about being seen kissing another man but the neighbor just shot us a smirk, blushed, and went on her way to the park across the street. Jasper soon followed and she held the elevator door open for him. I opened my windows for the first time and realized it was now daylight. I had work to do, people to see, things to sketch, and a man to see later that week.

-

Jasper rarely called. He just showed up. He knew my schedule, which rarely faltered, and how long each thing took. He apparently bought books about different techniques and spent a few hours researching porn. He gave up on the porn because he said they took too long to get to the point. I laughed at this of course and waited for him to ring my door at all hours, as usual.

As a result, I really didn’t have much time for a social life, not that I regretted it. When one spends one’s whole life dreaming about one’s best friend, it helps not to complain once one has obtained said friend and is screwing him three times a week. I knew it was wrong. I knew he still went home to Alice every night, especially when he stopped us halfway through a typical romp to go home and finish off with her.

But I never thought of her. I was selfish. I had suffered for too long with my secret desire and thought I deserved this little time of happiness. I guess, in my mind, I always knew it couldn’t last. As selfish as I was, I wanted him to be happy above all else and convinced myself that, as long as he was with me, this was true.

Months passed and, even though we never left my apartment, we managed to leave the bed. He always came to me with some request, maybe a toy, but my favorites times were when he said nothing at all and just walked to find me on the couch, tired. When I didn’t pay attention to him, he sat on my lap and started flipping channels until I rolled him off me, laughing.

I expected this would be one of those days. It was raining out and he rarely wanted to do anything when it rained, except eat dinner in quiet. I heard a timid knock on the door and figured he had his hands full with groceries. I chuckled and pulled on a pair of boxers in case it was my neighbor’s teenage daughter again, asking for her third cup of sugar this week, just trying to catch a glimpse of the two gay nudists next door.

My sordid affair had been reduced to a peep show in a matter of five little months. Fantastic.

I open the door slightly, not even bothering to look if it was him, because the microwave was beeping. “Honey, we should really talk about getting you a key,” I said with a laugh, running to get the popcorn out before the beeping drove me mad. It and alarm clocks were the bane of my existence.

A mousy voice came from the open doorway. I quickly realized it wasn’t Jasper and snapped around, bouncing the steaming bag of popcorn from hand to hand before dropping it on the counter. At first I thought it was my neighbor but she swung the door open a bit more and I saw her fully then, the little creature in the little black dress with long black hair. She was absolutely gorgeous and, by the color of her eyes and her short stature and the picture in Jasper’s wallet, I recognized her immediately.

“I’m sorry. I must be in the wrong place,” she said in a soft-spoken voice and began to turn. I ran around the kitchen table to stop her.

“You’re Alice,” I shouted and she froze. She turned around slowly and her eyes began to water.

“How do you… uhm… They told me at the front desk that I might find Jasper Hale here.”

I let out a jagged laugh. She looked me up and down, things starting to click inside her head. I couldn’t answer so I just stepped aside and waved her in. After she sat down, I took the sofa across from her and stared, mesmerized by her presence in my inner sanctum with Jasper.

“You’re Edward, aren’t you?” she asked, her voice breaking ever so slightly.

I nodded slowly and finally regained my voice with a squeaky, “Yes.”

“Where is he?”

I looked to the door. “He’ll be here any moment. He got stuck in traffic. Are you… Do you know? Did he tell you?”

She shook her head and the first tear ran free. I reached around for a box of tissues and handed it to her. She took a single tissue but just stared at it in her lap, in her trembling hands. “I knew. I saw the bruises. I followed him just to prove to myself I had nothing to worry about but… I never imagined this.”

I remembered the other night, the bruises she meant. They were thumb prints on his inner thighs. I was usually very careful. I hadn’t left a mark on him in five months, though Alice could surely see every bite, scratch, and even cut on my body.

“He loves you,” I told her honestly. “I know you’re not going to believe it because of how this looks but he loves you. What he does with me doesn’t change that.”

Her shoulders began to shake as she held back the tears. “Damn it!” she shouted, the tears flowing freely. “I know who you are! He used to talk about you all the time when we first started going out. You were his best friend growing up. I got one look at you and I knew who you were. He never told me you were—”

I cleared my throat and finished for her. “Gay.”

“He never told me he was gay either. It wouldn’t have stopped me from loving him. He should have said.” Her voice was cracking again. I handed her the box of tissues again and tried to keep my distance. The more I heard her speak, the more I could see the kind person seeping through. “And I wish so desperately that I could be angry with him but maybe I forced him into your arms because I couldn’t see that he wanted out. I didn’t even have a clue until I saw the bruises. Up until you opened that door, I was happy.”

It should have shocked me but I had been expecting this moment for months. I had never expected it to work. It took me five months to even consider the possibility of doing this forever. It’s what made every day so special.

I leaned in and explained, “You didn’t miss anything, Alice, because he always loved you. He was with me because we had missed our chance when we were younger. It was a different age and society would never have understood. It was also my fault because I was never honest with him, just because I was afraid of losing him. It’s the reason he didn’t tell you. We owed it to ourselves to try and I regret no part of the last five months. And while I have no doubt in my mind that he loves me just as strongly as he loves you, I know that he would never give us up. I knew it was just a matter of time before we’d have to make a choice for him.”

“You mean he doesn’t need to know,” she whispered, “that I was ever here.”

“He loves us both. But he has a chance to live a full life with you. You’re good to him, for him. You can leave your damn apartment without fear, hold his hand in public, kiss him whenever you want to… If he had never met you, things would have been different. I would fight the devil himself to keep him but you are the better of us two. I’m sure you understand that all I’ve ever wanted is for him to be happy.”

She nodded and finally wiped away the tears. “He’ll never be happy if you disappear,” she said, standing. “I think I’d like it very much if you could still come to the wedding.”

I was quite sure it would kill me a thousand times over to watch him go off happily without me but I didn’t care. Not only had Alice invited me but I couldn’t stand it if anyone else stood on his left at the front of that altar. I agreed but she could see the pain just under the surface, making my hands tremble on the doorknob. She leaned up to give me a kiss on the cheek and left.

Though I was selfish, I was not greedy. I always knew I was meant to love one man. I was positive I had found that in Jasper, that I would never find another replacement for him. I would go on as before with partner after partner, a life built on one-night stands. And if I should find someone new, it would never erase what Jasper and I had because what we had was never about the sex. It was the intimacy.

So I waited fearlessly for the end I had foreseen.

I knew that he’d walk in soon with armfuls of groceries and smile at me and I’d have to tell him I didn’t want to do this anymore. I’d have to lie and give him a half-dozen lousy excuses but he’d know and, if our plan went well and Alice kept her promise to love him as she’d done so far, he would one day thank me for letting him go.

I’d left the door open so he came right in, humming a silly commercial jingle and smiling just as I’d seen in my head. He saw my expression and the tissues forgotten atop the coffee table and the smile started to dwindle. It broke what little heart I had left but I still gestured for him to sit.

I took a deep breath and said, “We need to talk.”

-----

Before you start nitpicking the ending, you should probably know that this is something that happened in my own life. So shush. And yea, I was totally Edward. At least I got a nice angsty story out of it. Might put up a second part involving a threesome a few years later but, for now, I hope you enjoyed it.

Reviews are love.

 

Terribly sorry that it's taking me so long to post the sixth and final chapter of A Soft Refusal. I just don't want it to end, you understand. But, I've posted a sneak preview below, about a fourth of the full chapter, so you get what's going to happen. Enjoy!


MITCHELL

-----

I awoke to find Annie’s arm around my waist in bed. This had happened before. Usually, the person was dead and cold but Annie was still brilliantly warm. Her eyes were closed but I knew she had to be alive, as alive as she got anyway.

There was no wound on her neck. At first, I wondered if maybe I’d bitten somewhere else. The neck was a tad obvious so we often picked lower spots. I pulled off the bloody sheets and ran a gentle hand all down her body, feeling for holes. She woke up, startled but mostly tickled, and let my hand wander playfully downward.

“Looking for something?” she joked, smiling up at me.

I relaxed and fell atop her, a dead weight of relief. “You don’t know how amazing it is to hear your voice.”

She pushed me off her. “Did it work? Was it enough? I mean, if the wound is gone, does that mean the blood disappeared too?”

Oh God, she was rambling again. I rolled my eyes and pulled up the blood-soaked sheets. “Are you serious? We’re going to need a new bed. It’s probably soaked through.”

She reached then up to her neck. “It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.”

I raised an eyebrow. She probably thought I’d turn into a wolf like George and ripped her to pieces. “Not too bad?”

“It was…” she began. She stopped and looked around, trying to find the words. “It was exciting.”

“That word’s never been used before to describe that particular act. Grotesque is more commonplace.”

“Well you bit at a very particular time,” she said with a smile, standing up off the disgusting sheets. How had we fallen asleep on this? “Ugh, we’re going to need a blowtorch. Let’s just burn the room down and start over. Oh no! You got bloody fingerprints on the wall and all over the headboard too!”

“Be glad I didn’t break the freakin’ headboard,” I mumbled, rolling up the sheets into a little ball. It became a new routine. It was another one of those pesky forever things. Eventually, we’d develop little games in bed, a little role-playing and ropes. We found something new and exhausted it to death then moved onto something else.

We made it to March with no problem, living off laughter and sex and dinner.

Annie still couldn’t eat so it was a fairly one-sided dinner. She still just sat and watched me, eventually explaining the traditions she once held with Owen and ensuing a two-day fight over her subconscious fascination with that murderous bastard. She made it up to me against the wall of the kitchen. George and Nina walked in after and nearly called the police, thinking a massacre had gone down. Annie ran downstairs in a bloody sheet just in time to stop them.

He narrowed his eyes at us, shook his head in disappointment, and told her, “You spoil him.”

-----

GEORGE

-----

They were sickening in that too-much-sugar-in-my-tea sort of way. They didn’t change much since Mitchell had always been… affectionate. We were all still comfortable around each other and I was always over there to keep Annie company but they didn’t need me.

Nina didn’t need me either. She just went about her day. We had our honeymoon period and then we were sort of autonomous together. Until the full moon, of course, when we were right there next to each other, my arms stretched out ready to soothe her.

It was a warm winter day and the streets were still wet with the remnants of snow. I walked towards the house to visit Annie when I saw the figure in black crouched down by the window. It was thin and pale and, when I saw the new and old scars on its bare arms, I ran to catch her before she fell onto the concrete.

“Lee!” I shouted. “Oh God, Lee, what’s happened to you?”

The blood smears on her face were dry and I wondered how long ago she’d been attacked and why she hadn’t come to us for help sooner. The only explanation was that she hadn’t been able. I kicked in the front door to the house and Annie was instantly at our side, helping carry her to the couches. We laid her out and started to peel the shreds of her dress off the wounds.

“Bite marks?” whispered Annie. “I thought that all stopped when her brother died.”

Annie called up for Mitchell to come down the stairs. He smelled the blood long before she called and was down before Annie could finish her sentence. Lee still hadn’t said anything. Her eyes were distant, glossy white and I could smell something in the background, the sort of decay only a vampire donned.

“She’s in the black dress,” he said as Annie fetched the first aid kit and I went to get the alcohol off the kitchen shelf. I didn’t know what that meant so I shot him a look, urging him to explain. “It’s like the one she was wearing the day I met her. It’s that day all over again.”

Suddenly, Lee stirred and tried to sit up but she was too weak. Her eyes were still wrong like we were looking at a body without a soul, a cadaver. I snapped to Mitchell. “What do you mean? So what if she’s wearing black?”

“The first night we met, she thought I was part of the vampire coven that turned her brother. She was afraid they’d kill her. I think they finally caught up with her.”
 

So here's the big romantic climax, guys! It was supposed to be the finale but I've extended the story one more chapter. Please keep in mind that this is an M-rated story! Ye be warned.


-----

GEORGE

-----

Her note was clear. She had given me a clear command – to meet her in our changing room – and a specific time. It was also emotionless. We hadn’t looked at each other in the eye since the last full moon, hadn’t feigned conversations in the elevator or joked at the hospital chairman’s god-awful toupee.

What truly confused me was not the note. As I said, it was clear. What caught me off guard was the way she caressed my fingers as she slipped me the little piece of paper. I felt the spark then, perhaps the only time since her confession. Her words still echoed in my head.

“I… love… you…”

My poor heart buckled every time I thought about it. I propped the door open and waited for her. She slid inside precisely on time and shot me the kindest, smallest smile I’d seen all month. She sighed and placed her fists on her hips. I knew this stance well. She had come to some immovable decision. I sat on the remnants of the iron frame of an old bed and waited for her to speak.

“We can’t keep doing this,” she said in her commanding voice. Crap. She was serious. If she’d come to confess her never-ending love for me, I at least expected a few tears and a softer tone. But that wasn’t like Nina. If she was going to be nice about something, she made sure I damn well knew she wasn’t happy about it.

I might as well play along. “Doing what?”

“Okay, here’s the deal, Dog Boy. I can’t do this anymore. I can pretend to be angry about it. I can pretend I’m not afraid, but there’d be no point because every day you remind me of all the reasons I fell in love with you,” she began but was forced to stop when her voice broke. I almost jumped, surprised by the by sudden burst of emotion. “I act like I don’t notice but I see you with patients, with your friends… and as much as I know I should hate you for scarring me all over again, I also know that I want to be with you more than I want to be angry at you over something that I know was not your fault.”

I gulped, trying to take in everything she was spurting out at record speeds. “Nina, sweetheart, I need you to breathe.”

She laughed almost hysterically and raked her hands through her hair. She turning her back on me and I waited a moment, my eyebrows raised. When she turned back around, ready to rant all over again, I was standing an inch from her, staring her down with lustful eyes. I pressed my lips to hers, effectively shutting her up. She fought it for about half a second before she wrapped her arms around my neck and deepened the kiss.

I rose up for air a few minutes later and whispered, “I love you too.”

She smiled, smacked me across the head, and kissed me again. “This isn’t something small, Dog Boy. I mean it. I—”

“Move in with me,” I offered, cutting her off. I didn’t have the patience for another rant, not when she smelled so damn good.

She shook her head and took a step back, resting her hands on my chest. “Honey, compare where you live to where I live, then rethink the question.”

“I’m moving in with you?” I asked, unsure.

She smirked. “Think it over, love. In the meantime, strip.”

I paused for a moment, realizing what she meant. I looked down at my hospital scrubs. In all my nights wandering naked through the forest, I don’t I’d ever been happier or quicker about shedding my clothes.

-----

ANNIE

-----

I cowered downstairs in the kitchen while Lee sat with Mitchell. George came in looking slightly cheerier than usual as he held another one of Nina’s notes to his heart. I ran into him, wrapping my arms around him as I sobbed incoherently.

“Annie? Annie, what’s happened?” he asked but I just ducked as the painting of the cow in the living room smashed against the TV. “Oh no! Annie, not the TV! Anything but the TV!”

More items started flowing about the room and he rushed us into the kitchen, smacking me across the face to snap me back to reality. “It’s Mitchell!” I hissed as he shook my shoulders. “He’s upstairs and I think he’s dying. You need to do something!”

“Do what?” He was as hysterical as I was. “Has he been injured?”

I shook my head adamantly. “He’s hungry, George,” I answered clearly, gripping his shoulders tightly.

“Shit…” he whispered and looked at the stairs. “Where’s Lee? Is she up there with him?”

I nodded. “She brought him. She wants me… wants me to let him bite me.”

“Didn’t you already offer?” he asked, confused, beginning to head up the stairs.

I nodded. “He refused, George. He might as well have said he’d rather die than have me.”

His wide eyes turned dark and narrow, coming to a realization I had yet to make. “Annie, you’re hurting. You should be with him, not Lee. Forget about everything. I know he wants you.”

I gulped. “He wants me? Or my blood?”

George bent down a little and held my face in his hands, his eyes fixed on mine. “He wants you. You should know that better than anyone. The way he looks at you… He doesn’t smile around anyone else, love, not like that. Go on up. Take care of him, no matter what he says.”

I shivered with fear but my hands clenched into fists. I slowly walked up the stairs and lingered outside his door. I shot a look at George at the bottom of the stairs and gained the last bit of courage I needed to put my hand on the knob. I went to turn it when I heard her scream. It was light, a scream of surprise rather than terror. It was followed by nervous laughter and I pushed in the door, already fuming.

There they were. In bed. They didn’t even bother to lock the door or turn away or stop.

She sat on the edge of the bed, her arm extended out, with his lips on her wrist. A bloody knife slid off the sheets onto the floor and I jumped, gasping to keep the tears back. I covered my mouth with my hand but it was useless. Mitchell was staring right at me as he sucked Lee dry. She threw her head back and groaned and I felt like I had just walked in on some supremely intimate scene.

He let out a single tear then closed his eyes tight so he could continue without the scrutiny of my gaze. He wrapped an arm around her waist and rested her back onto the bed over his legs so she’d be comfortable.

I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to see it but I couldn’t look away, like some horrific car accident. I started to sob, my hand still clasped painfully tight over my mouth. I felt two hands on my arm and I was being pulled away. It was George. He shut the door behind me, slammed it. I heard gasping inside and figured Mitchell had finally stopped and rose for air.

I had the image of him burnt into my head, his eyes dark and teeth bared like some animal as he sucked at Lee like she was the very old rag he’d warned me I’d become. She was putty in his hands, limp. I looked at George, realizing how hard it was for Mitchell to stop. My eyes told him everything, every fear. He opened the door and stormed inside to make sure Lee was still alive but his thundering footsteps were quickly silenced. Things started flying downstairs, everywhere.

I heard Lee’s lighter steps coming towards the door and blinked away. I was suddenly in the kitchen, holding onto the fridge for strength. I expected her to go right past me but she didn’t. She was holding onto her arm where a large cut was dripping blood onto her feet. She stopped before me and her eyes begged for help. I grabbed a clean dishtowel from the drawers beside me and applied pressure to her cut. She was just staring off as she did when something traumatic happened, the way she had disappeared into her mind when Mitchell first found her.

I helped her to the kitchen table and wet another towel, trying to stop the blood. “Don’t worry,” she finally whispered. “I’ll be fine. I’ve had worse.”

I knew she had been a toy to her brother’s den of vampires but I didn’t want to ask any questions. I knew Mitchell hadn’t either. She didn’t like to talk about it but, from time to time, she’d venture into the dark topic.

“I’m so sorry,” she told me and my heart withered up. I was so horribly guilty that she’d had to relive that but it didn’t seem to faze her as though she’d gotten used to being used. She was so much like Mitchell, so calm about the horrors of the world, that I felt even worse that I had ever been jealous. “It wasn’t what it looked like. I know it can sometimes appear like more but it wasn’t.”

I nodded and pressed down harder. I didn’t want to talk about this now so I changed the subject. “Do you need something for the cut? What do I do?”

“Some alcohol would be nice,” she said. I nodded, made sure she had a good grip on that towel, and rushed upstairs to George’s medicine cabinet. He was the only one who really needed healing, especially after unfortunate encounters in the woods. Dodging trees wasn’t as easy as one might think, especially on four legs.

In the blink of an eye, I was back in the kitchen but Lee was over the sink, wiping away at the blood gently. Her eyes were blank. She took the bottle of rubbing alcohol from my hands and poured it over her arm. She winced lightly but I was the truly horrified one. If I could eat, I’d throw up in that moment.

I lingered back. “Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked quietly, trying to watch and listen upstairs at the same time. Everything was quiet, too quiet.

She shrugged. “Every time. It’s just another scar for the collection though. Not a big deal. He should be good for a few more months, as long as he takes it easy and avoids getting stabbed.”

I chuckled but it came out as a weak, scratchy whimper. She looked back at me over her shoulder, her eyes tired and bruised like she hadn’t slept in a bit. I thought Mitchell had said she was over her mourning period but maybe this was something else. Maybe it was an effect of the bite.

“Will he be—” I began but her fearsome eyes made me pause.

“I didn’t think you’d be coming,” she said. “I thought he was going to die. He’ll be talking to your neck for a few days but at least the blood lust is gone for a while. If you’re going to start feeding him, now is the time. He can control himself better when he’s already had a taste. It won’t hurt if you concentrate on something else. I dive into my paintings, all those beautiful, imaginary places. Try it.”

With that, she handed me back the bloody towel and walked calmly back out into the streets on her way home, her job done. Mine was just beginning. I climbed the stairs slowly, terrified of what animal I’d find. I pushed in Mitchell’s door and waited outside for some sign that it was safe for my heart to try again.

He was sitting on his bed, looking pensively to the wall where a window might be if his room had windows. He heard the creak of the door and his eyes flew to me. “Is she okay?” he asked, his voice a shadow of his cheery self.

I nodded and feigned a smile. I was so glad to see him… well, better. Fed. Whole.

He took in my harried appearance and continued, “Are we okay? I know what that looked like.”

I tilted my head and smiled more genuinely. I didn’t respond though. I stepped inside and crawled across the bed, to his side above the sheets. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and I rested my head on his. He sniffed my hair shamelessly, gripping me closer. The warmth started again, that unexplainable desire I’d never felt with anyone else. The humanity of it all was stifling.

“I’m sorry I didn’t let you help,” he whispered. “Lee told me you must have thought she and I were… something.”

“I know.” Though I didn’t until that moment, not for sure.

“I promised myself I’d never let anyone do that to her again, or to you, and then it got too late and I thought I was dying and all my stupid plans got shot to hell. Annie, I’m so sorry you had to walk in on that.”

I just rolled my eyes. I was tired of apologies and explanations. “Does it change anything, Mitchell?”

“You still want me to bite you? Even after seeing all that?”

I shrugged. “It looked… intimate.”

He chuckled softly. “Your fascination with the horrific is beyond eerie. I heard what you said,” he whispered, hiding his face in my hair. My eyes shot open. I went to deny things back and forth but he stopped me. “It’s okay. It’s all different now. We know why nobody’s succeeded before. They die. I can’t live without blood.”

“Well I can’t live without you!” I shouted. “If you heard what I said—”

“I won’t try it again,” he said in his sweetest voice. “I won’t deny what I am anymore. I promise.”

That quickly shut me up. We didn’t try anything, didn’t even try to move off the bed. We just lingered in each other’s presence. George poked his head in since I’d left the door open, saw my head on Mitchell’s shoulder – fully clothed – and visibly relaxed.

“I think I’ll go make us some tea,” he said calmly. He went to leave but stopped and turned back to us. “Oh! I forgot! Nina’s asked me to move in with her. We just shagged on a filthy basement floor and I don’t even care.”

He let out a tiny giggle and went off like a giddy cartoon to make us tea. Mitchell and I straightened in bed, suddenly tense. It struck us suddenly what it meant. Not only had he decided that we would part with old traditions and barriers and misgivings about behavior… we’d be effectively living together. Alone. And a thousand new questions ran through my mind.

-----

MITCHELL

-----

It felt like there was a whole house standing between me and Annie. After George packed up his things and we helped him load it all into Nina’s car, Annie and I just stood there on the porch, afraid to go inside. We faced the streets, our hands behind our backs as though afraid we couldn’t control ourselves if we got inside. The sun was starting to annoy me so I took a deep breath and braved the quietness of the house.

Annie followed around dusk. I was sitting inside on the couch, afraid to go up to my room. She leaned up against the wall behind the TV and pursed her lips, watching me. I didn’t let my attention wander to her beckoning eyes.

“Uhm… would you like some tea?” she asked. “Dinner, maybe? Well, not dinner, just… uh…”

She blushed and looked down at her feet. I chuckled because I hadn’t even thought about blood since Lee saved me. “I’ll just order a pizza, thanks,” I answered and reached over for the phone. With a wave of her hand, the phone flew out of my grasp and into hers. She looked offended and I didn’t understand why.

“Don’t be ridiculous! Is my cooking so bad that you would order an entire pizza all for yourself?”

Was this an argument? It was hard to tell with Annie. She got downright violent over homeless puppies but only mildly offended during George’s rants about her mug obsessions and midnight singing. “You know I love your cooking, Annie,” I said in a droll voice. I couldn’t believe that we’d been living together five minutes and already I was playing the bored husband. I’d technically lived with her over a year so I knew what I was expecting and how to respond to calm her down. “I would love some of that pasta you make. You know with the—”

“Ricotta cheese! ” she squeaked, clapping with excitement. “I’ll get right on it.” She scurried off to the kitchen and, fifteen minutes later, I was enjoying the biggest plate of pasta I’d seen in years. She just sat there and watched me. I didn’t question why she looked at me like that, only that there was love in her eyes.

I ate slowly because I knew it was late and I’d have to go to bed soon. When I’d finished and we’d cleared the table, I hadn’t in me to try dessert. She made me some tea and then I stood and I heard her hold her breath. She looked away and held her mug in hand. I turned around at the base of the stairs and watched her get up to wash the mugs, her back to me.

“Aren’t you coming?” I asked cautiously. Her hands froze and she let out that breath. “I’d like the company.”

“I don’t sleep,” she reminded me in a low voice, looking up at me over her shoulder.

I smirked at her innocence. “I know. I just want… I nearly died, Annie. For the first time in a hundred years, I keep thinking I won’t wake up. All I want is to see your face before I go, just in case.”

She turned her attention back to the mug and whispered jaggedly, “I’ll be up in a moment.”

I slowly headed upstairs and showered. When I got out of the bathroom, she wasn’t there yet. I sighed and climbed into bed, feeling a great pain on my joints. I knew it was just a heavy heart wearing down my body. I kept the light on for her, should she finally decide to come up and curled up on my side, clearing the left for her. I closed my eyes but I didn’t sleep, waiting for her footsteps up the stairs.

I don’t know how long it took her but she finally came up and my door creaked open. She took off her boots and slid in under the covers. She leaned over me and, probably thinking I was asleep, sighed and smoothed my hair back off my face. She kissed my cheek and said, “Goodnight, Mitchell. I’ll be here when you wake. I promise.”

For a whole week, it was so. She’d make me dinner, watch me eat, and I’d go up to bed. She’d wait a few minutes after my shower to climb in beside me and kiss me goodnight.

For that week, we were mostly silent around each other, sharing smiles and looks more than anything. Then, as though the icy wall between us had melted, we started talking again like George had never gone. She was lively again, vibrant. George visited her on days he didn’t work and Lee passed by. God only knows what those two talked about. I never asked.

We spent Christmas alone, curled up under a sheet in the living room. I hadn’t even tried to kiss her yet, which was mission. Then New Years came and I brought her to George and Nina’s party. It was a sea of hospital people so we could slip away without any worry of detection, to the balcony overlooking the city. She gasped when she saw it and my hand wrapped around her waist naturally. She didn’t even notice, already accustomed to my tiny, affectionate caresses.

The countdown sounded inside but she was too busy rambling about who-knows-what going down halfway across town. I just looked at her, waiting for her to notice I was there, that I wanted her. As the countdown drew closer to its end, she slowed her rant, feeling my eyes on her cheek. She laughed breathlessly and I took my chance. I turned her cheek and our lips met.

At first, it was awkward. We just stayed there, lip to lip, coming to terms with what was happening. Annie had told me she saw me as her eternal companion. She’d never said anything about wanting me physically the way I wanted her. Then, out of nowhere, her arm snaked around my neck and it was fireworks. I unleashed everything I’d been holding in all that time, all those nights when I had to feel the weight of her in bed next to me and do nothing.

Neither of us needed to breathe but we parted nonetheless, an instinct I suppose. We looked at each other, waiting for something to change but it never did. Only her new warmth, ever stronger.

“I’m sorry,” she said automatically, covering her mouth. I burst out laughing.

“What the bloody hell could you possibly have to apologize for?” She shrugged, my hands moving up her back to press her closer to me. She went to speak but I figured it was my turn to let it all out. “Annie, I’ve wanted to kiss you for months, longer even.”

“I’m sorry it took so long?” It was a question, not an answer.

I laughed and bent to kiss her neck. When I retreated to read her expression, I realized her eyes were huge and she was stuttering something. Did she think I was going to bite her? I laughed harder and rested my forehead on her shoulder.

She reached up to stroke my hair the way she knew I liked and we both relaxed after that. The first big milestone had passed and it looked like I wouldn’t have to die a celibate monk after all.

We walked home together, hand in hand, and we went to bed together, hand in hand.

-----

I expected her to wake me every morning but, that day in February, she never did. I turned in bed and found her with her eyes closed, curled up facing me. She breathed evenly, serenely, and I knew she was dreaming. I held my breath, terrified of waking her. I had work in an hour but it didn’t matter. I just wanted to watch her, wide-eyed, waiting for her to tell me absolutely everything she dreamed about.

George decided to check up on me, since I hadn’t met him for work, and the phone woke her up. I cursed loudly and answered, “What the fuck is it?”

She gasped and looked around, disoriented. “Well someone’s got a stick up his ass!” said George. “Where the hell are you, man? You were supposed to be here an hour ago!”

I groaned. “I was just—I’ll be there in a second,” I said and hung up rudely.

She looked me up and down. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

I smiled and tossed the phone aside. I climbed back into bed and straddled her, too happy to care that she hadn’t given me permission. “You, my dear, were sleeping. What did you see?”

“I… I don’t remember. Guess that’s best.”

I nodded and kissed her. She giggled and deepened the kiss, pulling my body atop hers. She rolled us around and my hands started to pull back her usual gray sweater. She had so many freakin’ layers! It’s like they grew back or something because if I took off something, there was always something underneath.

She laughed when she noticed my furrowed brow, my level of concentration. She looked down, rolled her eyes, and pulled off everything in a single, swift motion. I gasped, marveling the sight of her bra for the very first time. She looked at me, silently daring me to take it all off.

“You should be at work,” she said when I took too long.

I shook my head. “Screw work. God will forgive me.” She reached back to remove the bra but I stopped her. “You sure?”

“Well, I have to warn you that it’s been a while. By now, I’m sure they’ve changed a few things but I think I remember the mechanics of it.”

I gulped, remembering my predicament. “I could bite you. I don’t always have control.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered, unsure. It was obvious. “I’ll just float away somewhere if it’s too much.”

She might have been ready but I wasn’t. She didn’t know how truly uncontrollable I could get. It had been too long. I was getting hungry again. It wasn’t safe to bite but my eyes were already dark and my fangs were only a kiss away.

“Want me to grab a knife downstairs?” she offered lightly. Lee had probably been talking to her about this.

I scoffed. “You really want to try this, don’t you?”

“For the first time since we died, we don’t have anything to lose, Mitchell,” she said and all that uncertainty in her voice was suddenly gone. She slid off my pajama bottoms and positioned herself atop me. I held my breath, gritting my teeth as the animal threatened to unleash itself.

She bent over me to kiss my chest, unveiling her swan-like neck, and all hope was gone. I rolled us over and began to thrust inside her until she arched her back and called out my name. The lust was rising in my chest but I couldn’t feel my arms anymore and the bed felt like it’d caught fire beneath my knees. I sat her up atop me and my hand went to push her curly hair aside, revealing her neck to me. I whimpered, begging her permission, but all I heard were the same melodic grunts in the background.

She doesn’t care what you are or what you’ve done, I told myself. You can’t kill her. She’s the one. Let yourself have her. She’s the one.

She screamed she loved me and I dug my teeth into her skin just as we both went over the edge.

-----

I decided to extend this story by one more chapter, coming tomorrow, if not after. Blame schoolwork.

Reviews are better than intimate moments.

Part Four is here! Sorry it took a few days. I got food poisoning and got sidetracked. I'd originally planned five parts so this is the prelude to the big fight. Someone dies. Boo. And someone hooks up. Woot! Do you think I should go into full detail or no? I don't really see this being a pornorific story but up to you guys.
 

-----

ANNIE

-----

I lingered on the stairs, listening to them in the kitchen from time to time. George and Mitchell. Mitchell and Lee. George and Lee while Mitchell dressed. George and Nina. They were the most confusing of all. They whispered as though they knew I was there, as though they cared what I overheard. It was just silly mumblings from my end.

“…need somewhere safe… Stay with me! I’ll keep you—It’s dangerous in the woods… You don’t know how to handle it yet!” they cried.

I just figured Nina was worried about where George was changing every month. I didn’t get why. He liked the little room under the hospital just fine. Of course, I got out of there as soon as they started shouting and hissing. They did that often now. And, afterwards, George would retreat to his little craft corner in the living room and glue paper on… well, paper. Lee got him into origami but he’d just end up cutting and gluing the pieces together instead of folding. I wish I could help but I was good at neither.

I wasn’t good to anybody. I was just there for haunting. And even that, I was pathetic at. So I hid up in my room, curled up in my big sofa. When it got to be stuffy and my thoughts turned murderous, I wandered the house, humming to myself Beatles songs because that was all Mitchell played these days. Loudly. He thought the music could hide his groans. Maybe from George but not from me. They echoed in the walls and the walls were mine, extensions of my self.

Nobody bothered checking in on me to see how I was doing. I was a ghost. It’s not like I’d die. As soon as they stabilized their own chaotic lives, I knew they’d check in. They must have figured I wanted to be left alone which, to some degree, was true.

When Mitchell couldn’t sleep, he grunted to me he was going out which, I knew, meant he was going to Lee’s. Sometimes he brought her over to the house but mostly, they just sat and talked in the kitchen. He never once took her to his room, which I found strange. Maybe he knew what I felt for him. Maybe he was just being considerate to his flat mates. George certainly wasn’t shy about bringing Nina over once upon a time and he was the most considerate of us all. Doors locked, after all.

That’s when I began to consider that Lee wasn’t his girlfriend. I mean, their talks were usually pretty casual, in no way flirtatious. They laughed a lot, I gave them that, but there was always this invisible barrier between them. They barely touched, not in any way that screamed LOVERS to me. And Mitchell was nothing if not affectionate so for them not to touch was odd to say the least.

My mind was filled with all sorts of hopes and doubts. He was making himself some coffee in the kitchen when I cautiously walked in. It was the most I’d attempted to talk to him in weeks. He stood before the sink, looking sluggish as he stirred and stared off at nothing.

I called his name softly and he jerked, spilling his coffee into the sink. He cursed and turned away from me. I realized quickly that it was to hide his blackened eyes. “What were you thinking about?” I asked though I knew it was obvious. Blood, blood, and more blood.

“Just remembering old times,” he answered sadly, still unable to look me in the eyes.

I put my hand on his arm and turned him towards me. His eyes were normal but his sadness was written all over his face. I gasped and whispered, “God, Mitchell… why are you doing this?”

He scoffed and straightened up. “Don’t ask questions to which you already know the answer, Annie.”

But that was ridiculous! I didn’t know any answer. I barely knew the question!

I smacked him in the arm and stormed towards the stairs but he caught my arm. He pushed me up against the wall and pressed his body against mine. He was on fire and, I imagined, so was I. I could always feel him. Only him.

“Is this what you want, Annie?” he hissed into my ear. “To be just like all those other girls? To be used and reused like an old rag?”

“Why don’t you use Lee then?” I shouted back and he took a step away from me, his hands still on my shoulders. He lowered his head and left out a deep breath.

“Is that what this is about? Lee is just a friend. She keeps me steady.”

“And what am I? A painting on the wall? I could help you, dammit!”

He laughed dryly and leaned back in, his lips hovering over mine as though he were about to kiss me. I felt drawn to him but knew he would pull back before he ever did anything. I waited for a minute or two but he just lingered there. His nose pressed against my cheek and I shivered. One must applaud a man who could make a ghost shiver. I let out a whimper and only then did we part.

I realized my hands were clawing into the wall, keeping myself steady so I didn’t blink away. “I’m sorry, Annie,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

He went to retreat to his room, his eyes to the ground, when I took hold of his arm and pulled him to me. I buried my face in his neck and wrapped my arms around him, so tightly it hurt. George walked in and shot us a look.

“I can’t leave you two alone for a second, can I?” he joked, cheerier than usual given it was a full moon. I didn’t find it funny at all. Mitchell refused to touch me after that point.

-----

GEORGE

-----

I hadn’t talked to Nina in days. She had no choice but to face me tonight. The full moon was upon us and she’d be changing. I remembered my first time, how horrible it was to be drawn to the darkness as my insides tore themselves apart. She’d only left me notes, letting me know that she could feel her senses were awakening.

Now, it was just me and her in the little room under the hospital. I wondered what would happen if two werewolves were locked in together. Would we kill each other or see the other as a mate?

I hadn’t asked Mitchell. I hadn’t even told him about Nina. She didn’t want them to know and I respected her wishes, no matter how much I trusted Mitchell and Annie. She hadn’t told anyone at the hospital about me. It was the least I could do. If it were up to me, I’d set up a harem in the basement just for her and feed her grapes. I’d do anything for her, but all she asked was company. Nina was a realist. She understood she had no choice. She was the strong one.

And she was crying.

“I can feel it coming,” she whispered, the tears streaming down her face. She just stared at me as they flowed.

We were both fully clothed, facing each other like two cowboys at a showdown. The first crunch of our spine started and we both shouted. Her scream broke my heart and I ran to her side, to hold her steady, but I was in no shape to even try. She pushed me away and I understood. She wanted to do it herself. She’d always been alone. Why should now be any different?

“Don’t fight it,” I told her lovingly, going back to my spot on the other side of the room.

She didn’t say anything, just continued to stare through me at the wall, the tears continuing to flow freely. I sighed, knowing there wasn’t a word that could penetrate her tough exterior, and began to strip. I pulled my shirt up over my head and began to undo my pants as if nothing.

“What are you—” she began but stopped herself. She realized that, to change more effectively, we’d have to shed all our skins.

She mirrored my resigned sigh and began to unbutton her blouse. She threw everything into the same corner as me. First her bra, then her skirt and her underwear, and then we were naked. I looked her over, at the scars I had left, and the promises I’d make. I’d once told her nobody would ever hurt her. In a few seconds, she’d scream again and I’d be responsible and I knew my heart would break again, stopping twofold.

“Nina…” I began, interrupted by our screams. We seemed in sync. She stumbled forward, towards me. My arms wrapped around her to keep her upright. Her whole weight collapsed onto me but my muscles were so tense that I didn’t even feel it. I held her to my chest and tried to stroke her hair as long as I could.

“I feel like I’m dying,” she croaked between screams.

I nodded. I hated that it had to be her but I was glad to have someone else to share the experience with. It wasn’t so terrifying anymore, certainly not as painful. “I know. It’ll end soon. It’ll be like falling asleep and you won’t remember anything in the morning. And I’ll be right here when you wake. I promise.”

She chuckled, pulling us down onto our knees. Our arms were still wrapped around each other but I could feel her claws digging into my skin, her warmth turning into sweat where her skin met mine.

“If I don’t… make this… I just want… want you to know…” she grunted. She stopped completely as her nose and mouth began to turn into a muzzle. She managed one final gasp of human breath, just enough to say, “I… love… you!”

And so, the wolf took me over.

We woke up the next morning covered in filth and bruises. Parts of me ached that I didn’t know could ache and yet, strangely enough, I felt extremely satisfied. Because Nina was in my arms. Because Nina was cuddled up into my side. Because Nina was smiling and warm and, for just a moment, still loved me like I was the last man on this earth. Maybe I was to her.

I tried to stand and she stirred but didn’t wake. “Nina,” I called, shaking her gently. “It’s over, sweetheart. Come on. Mitchell will be here to let us out in a few.”

She chuckled and stretched. I saw the new scars then, the claw marks down her thigh. “I’m sure he’ll just love seeing me here.”

“I believe the words ‘freak the fuck out’ come to mind.”

I picked up our bag of clothes from the corner and started to dress. Her smiled began to wither as she watched me. “It’s really done?” she asked softly. I saw fear in her eyes for the first time.

I nodded. “Yea. For 28 days, we’re done.” She gave a soft nod and I was left… curious.

Mitchell walked in and, after a quick, exasperated explanation, he agreed to relax and keep it from Annie. We’d tell her eventually, when Nina was ready. She’d never “come out” to anyone before and Annie was a safe choice. It’s not like she was going to run away screaming. She was pretty much confined to the house.

As soon as we got to the hospital, it was the same again. She ignored me, made stupid comments and shouted… it was as though we’d never hooked up at all. It was as though we never were. And I was left back in my little craft corner, discovering the great art of wire bending and jewelry making.

-----

MITCHELL

-----

Time is a funny, fickle thing when you live forever. Some moments pass by at the speed of light because you’re too busy thinking about the inevitable future to notice the present. Others dwindle on by because you wait for something marvelous to happen, only to realize it never will. Not even in forever.

Annie was the epitome of the former. Lee and I were the sad, pathetic latter.

I wanted to fall in love with Lee. I needed to because she was a good thing, a reasonable thing. I visited her almost every day and, after a few weeks of consistent painting, she finished mourning and visited us as well. In a perfect world, I would live with her as long as I was able and feed from her as safely as she had taught me, but I did not love her. She kept me strong with her words alone. And she kept me sane by never once judging me for hiding away my feelings for Annie.

Lee knew she and I were supposed to fall in love and live happily ever after. She knew it was right but she never asked it of me, knowing all too well that my heart belonged with someone else. But now it’d been weeks and I was dying. Everyone saw it but nobody said anything. I’d stopped going to work last week because I could barely get out of bed anymore. Instead, I came to her. It was natural to come to her, effortless.

“You can’t keep doing this, Mitchell,” she scolded me over coffee as she used the back end of one of her paintbrushes to mix the sugar.

Nobody asked why I was always splattered with paint anymore. She’d managed to get it on every surface of her house so if I so much as leaned against a wall, I would be sporting a new shade all day. It was oil paint so of course, water and soap weren’t very effective and I rarely bothered to remove it. It was a nice reminder of her, like she was always with me, keeping me strong.

I leaned over onto the coffee table and ended up covering my sleeve with a vibrant red. I nearly licked it off my shirt, believing it to be blood. I was seeing it everywhere. Lee saw my darkened eyes and reached over to grab my arm in her iron clutches.

“Mitchell, you’re going to die if you don’t feed,” she whispered lovingly, her eyes the most concerned I’d ever seen. She set down her precious coffee and came around the table to kneel by my leg.

I tried to focus on her brilliant blue eyes as best I could but my once perfect vision had started to fade and all I saw was grey. I tried to speak but my expression told her everything she needed to hear. In a flash, she had me on my feet, her arm around my waist to keep me steady. She walked me to my car on the curb and drove me home.

Annie opened the door, her eyes wide. “Oh God! What’s happened to him now?” she screeched, coming to hold me on my other side. They helped me up the stairs to my room and everything sort of went fuzzy after that. My eyes were too heavy to keep open so I let my last glimpse be of Annie and I fell asleep with a smile.

Just as I had begun to dream, their arguing startled my mind awake. I stayed immobile and not by choice but I could hear every word. They were fighting at the foot of my bed.

“Damn it, Annie, you knew he was in pain!” Lee shouted. “Why didn’t you do anything?”

“Don’t you dare blame it on me,” she replied softly. “I offered. He refused.”

Lee laughed in that humorless way she had lost a few weeks back. It hurt me to see her regress over me. “Annie, did you ever think to offer not your neck but your heart? Why are you two so bloody afraid? Why can’t you admit you care?”

There was silence for a moment. “I don’t understand,” said Annie. “What does one thing have to do with the other?”

“He won’t feed off you because he thinks that’d make him like Owen. He tells me things, even if he never actually says them. It’s all over his face, Annie. You offered the wrong thing.”

“What would it do, Lee? If I told him I loved him, what would it matter? He’d still die. He’d still refuse.”

The voices got slightly more distant as a cold tear ran down the side of my cheek. I wanted to stand, to tell Annie… something. Anything. I didn’t know the words and I was still frozen. It was the cruelest of prisons, this body of mine.

I heard objects fly and crash around the room.

“It’d mean something to him! If he wants to die, he should die knowing you love him. He should die pure,” Lee continued loudly over the ruckus. I thought the roof was going to fall on our heads. I heard it creak, felt the room heat up around me. Warmer and warmer until I thought I’d finally caught fire.

Time passed. I heard whispers and footsteps and worried shouting, probably from George. That’s when I smelled it. The blood. It was coming towards me, fresh and alive, and my eyes shot open. I had expected to see Annie with her grand offering. I had expected curls and a worried smile and frantic ranting about the oddest thing but no. It was just Lee. It was just us in my room, her delicious blood gathering at the back of my throat.

I refused to swallow.

“Please,” Lee whispered as she hovered over me, her arm over my lips. “Do it for Annie. You can’t die without telling her how you feel.”

So I did. I swallowed. For Annie, because this wasn’t over yet.

-----

Reviews are better than shivers on a ghost.

Part Three was posted on Fanfiction.net last night but I forgot to post it here as well. I hope you're all enjoying the ride! It'll be over soon.

 ----- 

CHAPTER THREE:
Sanctuaries

-----

MITCHELL

-----

“Damn it, Mitchell!” she screeched, leaving our little cocoon of warmth to tower over me with her fists on her hips. “Couldn’t you just drink from me?”

My eyes grew wide as saucers. She was obviously serious but so nonchalant about the proposition as though she’d just asked me if I wanted tea. My words caught in my throat. I wanted to say yes. I looked at the way her beautiful skin glowed in the dim, distant light from my bedroom. I’d left it on.

“Annie, you don’t know what you’re saying. You’ve never seen me feed. You don’t know what—” I began but she just rolled her eyes at me. It was like trying to explain death to a child.

“I can’t die again, can I?”

I scoffed. I knew there were many ways to let her down gently. I could tell her I didn’t feel about her that way and that to drink from her would be too personal but that would be a lie. I did feel something. I would of course never quantify such a feeling because it meant the end of the happy little household we’d built. It meant I’d love her, use her up, and discard her the way I did every other girl I ever loved. It didn’t matter that she could never die. Even if it was a possibility, it would mean the end of everything.

I could have lied. So easily. I could have made up all sorts of reasons on the spot. But this was Annie.

“I’m sorry,” I said, softly as possible. She was a delicate thing and she would never understand my true reasons. “I couldn’t do that to you.”

She clenched her jaw and took two steps forward so I was face-to-knee. I slid up the floor and found myself with my back pressed to the door. It was colder here as though she radiated ice. Her dark eyes, the expression of outrage and pain, would be forever scarred into the back of my mind. This moment was ours.

I could have kissed her then and maybe she’d understand but I didn’t do that either, no matter how much I wanted to. “I can’t be here,” I continued stiffly as her jaw began to tremble. “Call if George comes out.”

She took a step back and, in a blink, she was gone. I heard talking inside George’s room and I realized where she’d gone. The voices were calm, controlled, so I didn’t hesitate to leave. They were safer here without me. I stepped outside and hugged myself for warmth. It was a cold morning in December and I’d been spoiled by Annie’s warm embrace.

I looked at the path on my right and my left, seemingly endless. Without my vampire family, without my friends, I was just a wandering soul. Just like Annie. I shook my head, trying to erase the way her eyes lit up. It wasn’t just tonight. It was a thousand days together, a thousand images of her smile, her lips, that obnoxious laugh and the way her hair bounced when she was excited. Which was often. Over any little thing.

I thought of Lee and decided maybe I still had a sanctuary left. I didn’t know if she’d be home but what did I have to lose? I wandered towards her side of town, to the warehouses and studios. The lights were on at her place. All of them, like some brilliant beacon calling to me.

I stood at her door for a few minutes, hugging my shirt around me. I hadn’t even bothered with a coat. I gave a single reluctant knock and she opened immediately, a whisk in hand. Her eyes were large, alarmed at the sight of me. I looked deathlier than ever. I didn’t want to scare her. I just wanted company.

She didn’t need to be told. She could see it on my face. “Well, hello there,” she greeted in a sweet voice. “You a’ight, soldier?”

I tried to smile but it couldn’t have come out very well. “I’m sorry to bother,” I began but she shook her head, shushing me, and stepped aside to clear the path inside.

“Come in! Come in!” she shouted, slamming the door behind her. She led me to her paint-smeared kitchen table and pushed me down into the chair. She turned off whatever she had cooking, which smelled strongly of egg, and sat across from me. “What’s happened?”

I gulped. “I don’t think I could. It's kind of private.”

She pursed her lips. “Well who the bloody hell am I going to tell? Spill it, vampire, or I’m going after my kitchen knives. I used to date a chef. I know how to wield a blade, mister.”

“Oh God, sometimes I wish you would just cut me into pieces, set me on fire, and spare them my baggage,” I told her, setting my forehead down into a puddle of blue paint on the wooden table. She chuckled and I raised my head to glare at her. “I’m serious, Lee. My best friend just asked me to bite her!”

She stopped laughing immediately. “Annie? The ghost?”

I nodded, wiping the paint on my sleeve. I was trembling, I saw. I wondered what else my body was doing without my consent, whether it was obvious to her.

“You love her,” she said. It wasn’t a question. “You don’t want to hurt her.”

“She’s a ghost. She’s not going to die if we—” This time, I stopped myself. She raised her eyebrows at me, slightly outraged. I quickly understood why.

She sighed and said, “Are you really going to try to convince me that feeding off her is okay? You’re talking to the expert here, Mitchell. I’m just sorry that my presence gave her the idea. I get why you wouldn’t want to hurt her.”

I shook my head. “I’d thought about it before. I’m sure she must have too.”

She was fiddling with her hands, unsure of how to go on, smiling awkwardly at me. I looked at her expectantly, urging her to just spit out whatever criticisms she had. I could take it.

“I don’t see the problem here, Mitchell!” she finally spat, throwing her arms in the air.

“I could hurt her!” I shouted back.

“You can’t kill her.”

“You and I both know how much it hurts to bite. I can’t stop now, Lee. She was already hurt once by the man she loved. I can’t let it happen again,” I said adamantly, returning my forehead to the puddle, defeated.

She made a tsking sound and leaned back, one arm over the back of the chair. “You can always… stop. Have you ever thought about, you know, physically restraining yourself?”

I shot up again and started to laugh, which turned into a cough because she was absolutely serious and I didn’t want to offend. “Bondage?”

“Not the S&M type!” she quickly corrected, laughing humorlessly. She did that often but I imagine she wouldn’t find much funny nowadays. “Not that that’s such a bad thing either. I mean, she can always tie you up to the bed or something and cut herself. It’s not much lovelier but the pain would be considerably less for her than if you bite her. Considerably less. And you never have to worry about frightening her or hurting her unintentionally.”

“I dunno,” I mumbled into my fist.

She shrugged. “Fine but honestly, if she already knows what you are and is willing to do it for you… consider yourself fucking lucky, mate. It doesn’t happen very often.”

She was right, I knew. I agreed, reluctantly, to consider the possibility, which she found ridiculous.

“You wanna borrow my chains?” she asked casually.

I sputtered unintelligibly for a minute before finally answering, “Well… since you offered.”

She laughed and went upstairs to fetch them. I realized then that she was in a white teddy and nothing else. I could see the marks on her legs, at the way she wore them with pride. I wondered if she tied up her brother too. Some marks were slashes, not bites. I furrowed my brow and started to walk around as she rummaged upstairs in her loft, muttering about a chap named Tony she’d met in Greece who liked nude beaches and metal cuffs.

“They aren’t comfortable for you but who bloody cares. You’ll live,” she laughed upstairs. “Oh! And let me get your clothes too! I just popped them in the wash this afternoon.”

I didn’t reply, captivated by a sketch of me she had lying around her kitchen. I’d interrupted what appeared to be either a late-night snack or an early breakfast but she just lit up when I was around so I didn’t think to apologize again. She wanted company too.

She came down the stairs with a pair of medieval-looking shackles atop a folded pile of clothes in her arms. I must have looked startled because she set them on one arm and came to rake her hand through my hair with the other as though she’d known me forever.

“You know what? Why don’t you spend the night? She shouldn’t see you like this.”

I gulped. “That bad?”

She laughed. “I’ve seen car accident victims look cheerier. She probably needs some time to think it over herself. I’ll go set up the couch, aye?”

I nodded and she got up on the tips of her toes to better kiss my cheek. I gave her a hug and helped her make the couch. I barely slept but my heart felt calmer. In her studio, surrounded by so many drawings of faraway places, planets, and people… I felt outside my own body, even if just for a few moments. It gave me peace.

-----

GEORGE

-----

The house had been dead silent, except for Annie and Mitchell’s conversation outside. When they were done, I felt almost… intrusive. When Annie offered herself, I just shot up out of bed and stared at my door like a useless imbecile. I wanted to run out there and shake Annie till the ideas stopped popping into her head but I just couldn’t move. Was she fucking serious?

I heard Mitchell’s footsteps outside and Annie was now in my bedroom. She raised a finger to her lips, gesturing for me to be silent.

“Annie, no…” I whispered, too low for Mitchell’s ears. Then I saw her face, the streaming tears and trembling hands. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head dismissively and calmly answered, “I’ll be fine. He can’t kill me, even if he does hurt my feelings. How are you? What happened with Nina?”

“You want to talk about Nina? He just—Oh forget it. Trying to get you two to talk honestly about this is like telling an astronaut the world is flat,” I mumbled, scooting over. She shivered and got in under the covers. She was freezing. “My god, Annie, since when do you feel the cold?”

She shrugged it off and cuddled close. “Ugh. You’re just as freezing as me! How is the bloodsucking corpse the only warm one in this whole house?”

I chuckled sadly. “I’m not even going to quantify that with a response. Are you seriously going to let him bite you?”

She raised an eyebrow at me, her arms folded on her chest. We rested against the headboard, side by side. I mirrored her pose so we could better talk as equals. She knew I was avoiding the Nina subject. I knew she knew I was avoiding the Nina subject, but she let me continue with my questions.

“He’s just being stubborn. He wouldn’t hurt me.”

I scoffed. “For one, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Remember when you saw me change in the living room? That wild beast you saw? Mitchell’s the mini-me version of that when he’s hungry.”

She smiled and looked off distantly. “I know he can control himself, George. Especially around me. He’s a teddy bear.”

“No… I’m a teddy bear. He’s the chupacabra. But you’re right. If the hunger gets bad or heaven forbid another stabbing occurs, and I know it will, you’re going to have to grow a set and take it,” I said, which instantly sounded wrong. I took a moment to gather my thoughts before continuing. “Annie, you’ve got to understand that biting for him is almost a mating ritual. It’s something personal and primal. He can’t separate the two desires. Look at him and Lauren. When you told him to bite you, you might as well have invited him to shag in the linen closet.”

She snapped to face me and I felt her shift and tense beside me. She gave this tiny whimper and I understood. Her innocent tears went away instantly, replaced by the tiniest flicker of a smile.

“Annie… would you like to shag Mitchell in the linen closet?” I bluntly asked.

If she were alive, I imagine she’d gone pale, but all I saw was a faint blush reach her cheeks. Maybe she did have blood after all. She certainly had tears, we knew. And she didn’t have to respond. I knew her answer.

“Oh geez, you do! You want to shag Mitchell in the linen closet!”

She slapped my arm, gesturing me to shut up in no uncertain terms. “George, it’s not like that. It’s just that… you’re the most human of us all. You’re alive. You can get married, have kids. Mitchell and I are dead, more or less. We’re forever. When you start a family, when you die years from now, it’s just going to be me and Mitchell and this old house. I’m pretty sure he’s going to be the only thing keeping me to this world. Do you get me?”

“Well yea, I suppose. I just don’t get why you two don’t want to admit you care about each other.” This was true. I wasn’t an idiot. It took me a bit to notice and it was just a notion but I knew Mitchell had grown attached to her. Annie naturally loved everyone but he was careful with his heart, guarded it with steel bars. “He wants what’s best for you and he doesn’t think that’s him. So, while I agree, I also believe he loves you enough to do anything to stay with you. If the hunger gets bad enough and he stays loyal this time, I think he’d eventually agree to give it a shot.”

She grunted and furrowed her brow, staring off at her feet. “You’d think I were donating a kidney or something. That stupid git… Are you done avoiding the subject now?”

“What subject?” I had temporarily forgotten about Nina and I silently thanked Annie with a smile. “No, I don’t want to talk about Nina. It’s hers to tell, if she wants to. I don’t know. I need to talk to her again.”

“Did you two break up?” she asked sheepishly.

I put my arm around her as she rested her head on my shoulder. “I don’t think so, love. It was just a fight. Don’t worry. Mummy and Daddy aren’t getting a divorce quite yet.”

I hoped. I prayed. Nina was probably as terrified as me but she had always been stronger. She already came scarred. She hid the scars but didn’t deny them the way I did. Something made me feel like it was going to be okay, as long as my friends didn’t eat each other first. Nothing had changed for me. The ball was in Nina’s court.

-----

ANNIE

-----

Mitchell arrived home late in the afternoon. He walked in wearing the same clothes as last night and no coat. George and I hadn’t realized he’d left until we went looking for a snack that morning. George was ravenous so he made himself some fancy-sounding pasta while I made us some tea.

He had to head to work but it was Mitchell’s day off so who knew when he’d come back. I was surprised to find him smiling brilliantly. He gave me another kiss on the cheek and walked right past me like last night’s proposal had never happened, too insignificant to remember. He had a bag in hand with paint splotches on one side and pieces of parchment sticking out, and I noticed the same Prussian blue had dried into the roots of his hair.

I wanted to ask him about it but all I got out was, “How’s Lee?”

Passive enough, no? I knew biting his head off over a relationship we didn’t even have would probably not be very smart. But, as we’ve greatly established so far, I was not very smart. It’s my excuse and I’m sticking with it.

He caught the slight acidity in my voice and his brilliant smile started to fade. I have to say I missed it the instant it died away. “She’s fine,” he said, his voice light as we lingered before the stairs. “She drew me. Apparently, she liked my bone structure. Something about my old soul coming through. She let me keep the rejects so I’m thinking I’ll have them framed. In another hundred years, I bet they’ll be worth thousands.”

He laughed and hurried upstairs. I fought between joy at seeing him so happy and jealous at seeing him so happy over another girl, especially one he’d just met. She was kind enough but come on! He didn’t look well though, which also tore at my heart.

I just stood there, awkwardly waiting for him to resurface. When he didn’t, I swallowed my pride and went to linger in the hallway outside our rooms. I heard the shower in the distance. He’d left the door to his room ajar. I just peaked in, trying to get a whiff of him, and saw the bag he’d brought waiting for me by the foot of his bed. I pulled one of the rolls of paper out and opened it.

He was right. It was absolutely beautiful, a detailed portrait of Mitchell. Asleep.

The jealousy roared inside me again and a small snow globe he had in the corner of his room flew by my head, slamming into the wall. It was a sturdy plastic so it didn’t break but the wall had a small dent in it now. I put the snow globe back, frantically, afraid of being caught. I rolled the portrait back up, slid it into the bag, and hurried back downstairs.

When he came back out for dinner, I was sitting in the living room, staring off at a turned-off television with a coffee mug in my hands. He froze and decided to sit on the seat farthest from me where he could still watch me. I handed the coffee mug out to him.

“Go on,” I said in a distance voice. “I just made it.”

“Oh brilliant!” He smiled and shot me his gentlest look of gratitude. “How’s George?” he asked, trying to make conversation.

I continued to stare at the blank TV screen. The remote was sitting on the big couch next to me but I didn’t touch it. “George is fine. He’s at work, probably trying to avoid Nina. He made two centerpieces and a paper mache bowler hat before he left. Don’t worry. I conveniently misplaced his glitter.”

“He’s gone mental.”

I shrugged and brought my legs up to better rest my chin atop my knees. “They had a fight. He’s trying to deal with it. Let him.”

Everything went silent again and I didn’t even notice or care. I just liked having him in the room, a sign that life still existed after death. He used to get that. He’d linger by me like I wasn’t even there yet smiled at me the moment I moved as though proud I had. It was very easy for people such as me to stay frozen like this, lost in thought.

“Are you even going to acknowledge what happened last night?” he mumbled into the coffee pot. His voice was low, docile. He didn’t want a fight either. He just wanted to deal with it.

“No,” I answered. “You were clear.”

“Are you angry with me?”

He sounded like a child who’d just broken his mother’s vase, not his best friend’s heart. I shook my head, because I honestly wasn’t angry.

“Are we going to be okay?”

I waited a moment before nodding because, of course, things were different now. But yes. We would always be.

Come night, he got up off his silent throne and kissed me on the forehead. He went to the kitchen to leave his mug, upstairs to grab his keys and his new splattered bag, now empty, before hurrying out the front door without a word.

I’d learn later that he had gone to the local art store to get Lee some charcoal because she had apparently used it all on his sleeping portraits. He got George some modeling clay to occupy his mind and slightly less feminine blue and green confetti and I helped clear a craft area in a corner of the living room.

The suggestions had been refused and set aside in our memories. We were returning to normal, diving into our little protective bubble. As long as we didn’t talk about Mitchell’s growing hunger issues, George and Nina’s avoidance issues, and my growing affection issues… we’d be fine.

-----

Reviews are better than linen closets.

Voila! Because it's midnight here and I just couldn't wait for you all to read it. Sorry if they're not edited but I'll eventually get to it. It should be legible. Enjoy!

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CHAPTER TWO:
Phantom Pains

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Some conversations and revelations on the path to self-discovery.

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MITCHELL

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I led Annie downstairs where George was curled up on the couch, waiting for Nina. He’d fallen asleep and begun to snore, mumbling something about pipe cleaners and glue. Annie and I shared a look and smirked at each other across the kitchen table.

“So you just saw her in the club?” Annie asked, breaking the silence with her sad attempt at interrogation. She and George were making me crazy with all their suspicions. Why couldn’t they tell I was in pain? Why weren’t they happy about it?

I just scoffed at her. “I smelled her, Annie. You happy? She was covered in vampire blood. I thought they’d found me or something. When I realized she was just a scared kid, I got her out of there and brought her here… She, uhm, tell you anything?”

Annie scrunched up her nose like she was debating whether or not to tell me. “She killed her brother,” she whispered as though it were something truly shocking. I’d actually suspected it since she told me her brother had been turned. “That was all the blood. She let him feed off her for months but they couldn’t do it anymore and she—”

She interrupted herself and silence smothered us again. Annie was sipping her empty mug absentmindedly, staring off at the wall. No matter how many times she staved off death or how moody she got, she was still the same innocent little girl we met all those years ago. Silly to think a ghost would change.

I reached across for her hand across the table. She flinched and my hand went right through her, slamming on the table as I tried to hold onto her. In a blink, she was gone and just as quickly, she was back in her seat.

“You okay?” I asked. She was never so twitchy about me touching her. We used to curl up on the couch all the time, watching old movies when I couldn’t sleep. Lee had been the only change and I realized what she feared. I was the same as the monster that had done that to Lee. “Look, Annie, I get that you’ve always seen me as just another guy, your friend through anything, and I’m still him, I promise. But I’m the monster too. I’m not like George. I can’t put it away for a month then have my happy jaunt through the woods and wake up refreshed. I saw her covered in blood and I felt hungry. I saw those scars and I wanted to feed off her. I know it’s ugly but I’d rather you see the truth than the lie, even if it makes you a little jumpy around me.”

She gazed at me for a moment then refused to look at me again. “I see you,” she answered softly. “You think I don’t. I know what you are, Mitchell, and it doesn’t matter. It never has. I just—I wonder some things.”

“Like?” I urged her on with a lazy smirk.

“Like whether you ever thought about… you know, not killing the girls you sleep with. I mean, Lee’s brother fed off her for months and she was okay. Why don’t you get a human girlfriend? They’re not as exciting but hey, you might actually be happy for once.”

I laughed, so loudly that George shot up all of a sudden, screaming something about too much glitter on the pears. Annie wasn’t amused at all.

“No,” I answered, the laughter dying. “Annie, what am I supposed to tell the poor girl? ‘Hey baby, how about I suck your blood? Don’t worry, it’ll only hurt for eternity.’ I’d have to reveal what I am! It’s not the blood they’d be missing. It’s the safety of not knowing we’re out there!”

She shushed me, nodding towards the stairs. “Don’t wake her. I didn’t mean to rile you up. It was just a question.”

I shut my eyes and sighed. “Sorry. No, you’re right. It was just a question.”

A stupid question. It wasn’t an option. I’d accepted it years ago. These were different times and I didn’t believe I could fall in love again. Even if I did, it’d be temporary and I was too hungry right now. I wouldn’t be able to control myself.

I looked at George on the couch, snuggled up with his plastic fruit. He’d found Nina. He’d found someone who loved him for the beast he was. Maybe it was a possibility. I was much harder to love but maybe there was a chance after all. Annie saw my line of sight and she seemed to be thinking the same thing.

Something caught fire inside me, maybe the remnants of my dusty heart. For a moment, just a moment, I saw Annie as the girl and not the ghost. Not just any girl either. She was beautiful and she was here and she was… glowing before me like I’d never seen. Did ghosts even have blood? She could touch things and feel more and more. She was cold, I knew from our makeshift kiss, but her hand kept getting warmer the longer I held it. Maybe giving up death made her corporeal again.

I chuckled to myself, after some time of silence, for even pondering such foolish things. George was woken by his cell phone. Nina had apparently gone home alone and he ran to meet her at her place. The boy was turning into a desperate puppy but I didn’t say a thing. I quickly went back to my quiet contemplation beside Annie. We moved to the couch and cuddled up as we usually did. George was the only one that could ever really get a good night’s sleep around here. I was right. She was warmer than before. I could hear something pulsing beneath the surface of her skin.

I gulped because I’d never really seen her like this. I had always known she was beautiful and a wonderful, caring girl but never had I thought of her as a possibility. Now, any little touch meant something to me. I was hungry in more ways than one and I was painfully aware of it. I wanted to feel normal. I got up around 9:00 and went to make myself some more tea, just a pretense to get away from her for a second. When I came back, I sat on the other side of the sofa and put my feet up on the footrest. She decided to scoot over and rest her head on my lap. Great. Like I wasn’t getting all sorts of dirty imagery already.

Around 10:00, Lee woke up and started down the stairs. She looked definitely different too. For one, she was smiling and her eyes just seemed to light up.

“Hey,” she greeted with a timid wave of her hand. She was wearing one of my t-shirts and a pair of my plaid boxers. She caught me looking her up and down and blushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t have anything to wear. Uh, have you noticed that your room is shaped like a coffin?”

I laughed and nodded, going to stand up and give her a hand down the stairs. It was pure instinct since I’d basically had to carry her all night. I wasn’t used to seeing her stand on her own. “Yea… it was just a strange coincidence. You feelin’ better?”

Annie stood up behind me and, in a blink, she was in the kitchen. “You like omelets?” she shouted at us. “You must be starving!”

“I guess, yea,” said Lee. “You’re all very kind. Thank you for this.”

I laughed and pulled out the chair for her at the kitchen table. “Well, you know about our kind. That makes you rare and, to us, family.”

Annie muttered something to herself in the distance. She pulled some omelets out of nowhere for me and Lee and we all ate in silence.

“I promise I’ll be out of your hair before night. I’ve got a place on the other side of town. Haven’t used it in a while. I guess it’s been waiting for me,” said Lee through a mouthful of eggs. She really was starving, the poor girl.

“It’s no problem,” I offered. “Stay as long as you need.”

She shook her head adamantly. “No chance, Mitchell. I know your reputation with girls. I already woke up naked in your bed once, thank you very much. And you didn’t even buy me dinner!”

We all laughed humorlessly. I lent her my most androgynous pair of jeans and button-down shirt and walked her home. She was pleasant company after all. She was an artist and lived in a studio big enough for her to be a good artist. Her paintings and sketches were hung up all over the walls and there was a staircase that led to a loft with a queen-sized bed, looking lonely and still unmade. She hadn’t seen it in months. I could tell by the way she lit up and collapsed face-first atop it as soon as we came in.

She made me some tea and we talked some more. I told her about the war and the “fun” years with Herrick. She told me about growing up in London with hippie parents and we laughed about the Beatles, agreeing that Ringo was greatly underrated. I was about to leave when she remembered she was still wearing my clothes and asked me to wait a minute so she could change.

“No!” I told her, gesturing her to stop. “It’ll give you reason to stop by again.”

She smiled at me like she was looking for something in my eyes and reached to open the door. “Thanks for saving my life, Mitchell the Vampire.”

I chuckled and slipped on my sunglasses. “Thanks for the company, Lee the Artist.”

I was extremely happy to have a human friend I didn’t have to hide from, perhaps too ecstatic. And so, we parted as quickly as we met.

-----

GEORGE

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Nina was asleep in bed when I got to her place. I had a key so I let myself in. She was probably exhausted and had just dropped into bed in her scrubs, her shoes still on and everything. She was the cutest workaholic I’d ever seen, even with her mouth half open as she drooled onto her pillow.

She wasn’t the kind of girl I imagined myself falling for but the kind of girl I once wanted would never accept a werewolf so easily. At first, she’d been riddled with questions, mostly about the transformation. I answered them quickly, unabashed. I figured she’d seen the worst and stayed so the details were a lot less gory by comparison. Good thing she never asked about that first night we made love. I had been a bit feral. I think she just put two and two together.

I looked at her limp body and all I could think of was the smoothness of her skin, the salty taste of her after the first hour of love-making. I thought of her tiny moans when I kissed her and the way she called out my name in bed and I couldn’t help myself. I crawled in beside her. She stirred but didn’t wake.

I loved the way she smelled, even after a day at the hospital, so I breathed in deep. Her particular scent was always there, loyal and true, no matter how long we’d been apart. I nuzzled closer and buried my face in her neck, looking for warmth. I could have stayed like that forever.

The alarm rang some time later, probably near dusk. I reached up to silence it. She didn’t have to work today, I knew for sure, so she couldn’t avoid me. She curled up into me at first but, upon realizing who I was and where we were, jumped up off the bed. “George!” she screeched. “What are you doing here?”

That was the last straw. What was I doing there? Seriously? What was I doing there?

“I’m your bloody boyfriend! I spent the day with you here, that’s what I did. I kept you company and you didn’t even notice. Now you ask me that like I’m some sort of invader, like I’m Napoleon incarnate and—”

“You scared me, George!” she shouted back, stopping my rant in its tracks. “Stop it!”

I whimpered uselessly and stood up off the bed. I went to retreat back towards the main door when I felt her grab my wrist. I froze. This was the most she’d voluntarily touched me in weeks. I knew what this was about, I thought.

“I would never hurt you,” I said with a soft, incredulous chuckle. I couldn’t believe she’d even consider it. “That beast is not me, Nina! I thought you understood that.”

Her bottom lip started to quiver and tears starting flowing all over the place. Was this woman insane? Suddenly, she took a step forward and lifted up her sleeve. I realized then this was the first time I’d seen any part of her in weeks, any real emotion. I left the safety of her eyes and wandered down to the scars on her forearm, long and menacing as the ones on my own shoulder. I touched mine by instinct. They started to ache, a phantom pain.

“When did I…” I stuttered so softly that I didn’t think she’d heard.

“That day. Herrick. You pushed me against a wall,” she answered, the tears rolling down her chin.

“Nina, I—” I began but she looked away, covering her arms again so quickly that you’d think she were smothering flames.

She shook her head and went to the front door. “Go away, George,” she said, her eyes to the floor. “Please. I can’t stand to look at you right now.”

My heart shriveled up as painfully as any full moon and I bit my tongue to keep from screaming. I could taste blood. She had given me one choice. Do as she said.

So I left.

-----

ANNIE

-----

I watched them go, laughing as they went, and realized I was left alone again. I hated being alone in the house these days. I kept thinking that the door would show up again and I’d have to take it without a goodbye. I don’t know if I’d be strong enough to resist it a second time without Mitchell and George there. There’d be no reason to stay without them.

They didn’t get back till noon. In the meantime, I cleaned the house and the mess we’d made when Lee showed up. I also discovered George’s secret glitter stash and accidentally misplaced it down the toilet. He’d thank me later when he could still claim his manhood.

I looked around at the bad wallpaper from twenty years ago. I found the house to be suffocating without my boys. I knew George would be spending the day with Nina to make up for last night and Mitchell would probably spend it working at the hospital, if not at Lee’s. I wouldn’t put it past him if he decided to stay for a quickie. Okay, so maybe I’d never seen him have a quickie but one cannot deny that his last sexual encounters have all ended kind of pathetically disastrous. They are, by his nature, very quick.

When he got home that night, I met him at the door so I could glare at the dark circles under his eyes, looking for any change. There was none. I sighed with relief but he just rolled his eyes. I might have been a bit obvious with my intentions.

“Annie, would you like me to pee in a cup for you something?” he joked, kissing my cheek hello. He was in a jolly mood, which was strange considering he was still obviously suffering. George hadn’t noticed his shaking hands but I did. What else could I do but observe the world around me? They were shaking as bad as ever.

I smiled at him sadly and raised a hand up to caress the spot he’d kissed. I loved it when he touched me. When George did, when Tully had, it was just a distant echo like I knew it was supposed to hurt. A phantom pain, I suppose. When Mitchell kissed me, it’s like I recognized the death in him. We were on the same plane of existence, one might say. And his plane felt warm on mine, like the faraway glow of a fireplace.

I knew he was cold to anyone else but he would always be warm to me. I tried to imagine how cold I must feel to him. Surely, he was used to kissing corpses by now. After all, he couldn’t kill them if they were already dead.

I let the kiss and the moment pass as another tiny, meaningless sign of his brotherly affection. Because, of course, this was all it was.

He made himself a sandwich and practically skipped up the stairs. I pondered giving him some space but I was curious and I was not one to deny my own curiosity. What else did I have for entertainment? Television? Mitchell’s life was so much more interesting than those cheepo fang boys with the black eyeliner.

I was about to follow him, to barrage him with questions I always did, when George came storming past me to his room. He looked… broken? He moved too quickly for me to tell.

I looked up at the stairs. Mitchell had poked his head out into the hall, his sandwich caught between his bared teeth. We looked at each other. I shrugged, helpless. He crossed the hall and knocked on George’s door.

He swallowed his bite of sandwich and called out, “George, you okay in there, mate?”

I watched from the stairs, terrified. Images of George changing in our living room all those months ago rushed back into my memory. The pain, the screams. Even if George wasn’t crying out now, if he was silent as the grave, we all heard the cries for help.

Mitchell said he couldn’t sleep without seeing that George was okay so we camped out against his door, huddled close, waiting for him to come out. He wouldn’t, of course, but it didn’t matter after a while. It was quickly becoming a habit. He and I. Looking for an ever-increasing warmth the other didn’t know existed.

We didn’t talk but he held my hand as usual. It’d never been like this and we both knew it. We were just waiting to see how far we could last like that, immobile, before it all fell apart again. He eventually fell asleep with his head on my shoulder. I tensed as his shoulders relaxed and he drifted gently off to sleep.

“You’re warmer,” he mumbled into my sweater and I wrapped my arms around him. If I indeed was warmer, the least I could do was act as his blanket when the night got cold.

“You should go to bed,” I answered. “Go ahead. I’ll keep watch in case he comes out.”

He shook his head and his hand slid across my stomach. I flinched and the tiniest whimper escaped me. “No, I don’t want to be alone.”

“You’re not alone,” I answered, rolling my eyes. Men were such babies. It’s not like I could go anywhere. I’d be lingering just outside his door, haunting him from a distance. “You’ve never been alone a day in your life, Mitchell.”

“And you have?” he replied just as sleepily, barely comprehensible.

I smirked at my beautiful walls, once my only company. “Before you two… I thought I’d spend the rest of my existence completely alone. No one could hear me scream or cry or laugh. So, I know you’re feeling bad right now. I know you’re counting the seconds till you can allow yourself to kill again, but I want you to know that it’ll be okay. No matter what, I’m always going to be here when you need help or company. I’m good company, I promise. You never even have to talk.”

He didn’t move again and I thought I’d maybe gone too far. Had I offered something that was not mine to give? He didn’t breathe but I knew that didn’t mean anything. I wished I could see his eyes.

A few minutes passed and he hugged me tighter by the waist. I took it as a sign to continue. “Mitchell?” I whispered.

“I thought you said I didn’t have to talk,” he said, his voice light and louder. He was awake now, fully.

“Did I wake you?”

He shook his head again. He didn’t seem in the mood to talk at all. So, because social cues were kind of nonexistent to ghosts, I went on. I rambled on about every worry I had and every hope and I realized that they were the exact same thing.

“…And I just can’t help but wonder about eternity. I mean, I know you’re used to it. I know you’ve survived a hundred years and my eternity is considerably less but it’s still wrong to me. Every night when I go to my chair and stare off at something till morning, I’m just waiting for you both to wake up so I can get a chance at talking with people again. I miss it so much. I don’t care if you just complain about missing mugs or Nina’s constant bitching or the arseholes at the hospital. It’s just nice to hear voices again,” I said. I stopped when he gave my stomach a tiny squeeze to let me know he was listening. I bent down to see his eyes were closed.

He must have felt me move and added, cheerfully, “You can always visit Lee now, you know. She invited us over. She’s got a nice big art studio just fifteen minutes away. I’m sure she’d love the company herself.”

I pursed my lips and furrowed my brow. I didn’t want freakin’ Lee. I wanted him. But, of course, he wouldn’t get that part. So I tried to elaborate, completely ignoring the subject of his new plaything.

“Hey, Mitchell? If George and Nina get serious one day and he decides to move away, would you leave too?” I timidly asked. It was another one of those floating concerns.

I didn’t expect him to lift his head up like that, startling me. “Annie, I’d never leave you!” he shouted. “George and Nina wouldn’t either. Even if they move away, I’m sure they’d stay nearby.”

I must have started to cry because he took my face in his hands and wiped at my cheeks with his thumbs. I didn’t really want to look him in the eyes. I thought if I did, he’d be able to read my soul and know what I was thinking, what even I didn’t know I wanted. I looked at his lips for a split second and instantly felt guilty.

“What about a hundred more years from now?” I whispered, fumbling with my hands on my lap. I looked down and away. “What happens to us after they die and you and I are alone?”

He smiled sadly. “I’d still be there, Annie. I’m kind of forever.”

I gulped. “Right. Until you get yourself killed, you mean. You annoy the wrong vampire, the wrong paranoid neighbor, and I’m alone again.”

He looked at me like I was being ridiculous, smiling bright as always. That smile could be painful at times. “What would you like me to do, Annie? I promise I’ll try not to pull any more stupid moves but if I don’t feed soon, I’m going to die. It’s a big probability.”

“But you can try. For as long as you can.”

He shook his head. “Annie, the longer I let the hunger fester, the harder it’s going to be to stop when the time finally comes.”

I’m not sure how I arrived at this. I’d thought about it once or twice just as a curious something or other to pass the long nights. It was an impossible probability. But I asked it nonetheless.

“Damn it, Mitchell!” I exclaimed, jumping to my feet. “Couldn’t you just drink from me?”

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Remember the title, dears.

Reviews are better than slightly inappropriate touching between friends.

It seems FFnet is having some issues so I've posted A Soft Refusal: Part One below. Part Two comes tomorrow and, if ffnet hasn't resolved whatever's going on, you can of course always find it here on my LJ. Thank you all who've followed me here and pardon the inconvenience. Oh and I'm sorry if some italics were lost in the process.

As always, reviews are lovely.




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A SOFT REFUSAL
By NeuroticMuse413

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DISCLAIMER: Don’t own Being Human though I wouldn’t mind borrowing Mitchell for a night or two.

SUMMARY: Post Ep. 6. When Mitchell brings home a mysterious vampire victim, he discovers new ways to satisfy his thirst, as well as some emotions he didn’t know he had. When Annie walks in on them, the furniture takes a beating and more than feelings erupt. Meanwhile, Nina struggles with telling George about her “condition” as he resorts to obsessive arts and crafts as a coping mechanism. M/A, G/N.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’m not British so I’m sorry if I messed up the dialogue.

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MITCHELL

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George was being… George. Now that he and Nina were trying to get back on track as a “normal” couple, it meant Annie and I were out of a house on days when he wanted to get laid. He’d been trying to ask her to move in for days but she seemed intent on ignoring him. Poor bloke. I knew how he felt. I’d been cock-blocked for weeks.

I sat on the front step till midnight. I’d gotten dressed to leave but Annie grabbed onto my sleeve and shot me one of her deadly puppy dog looks and I was down for the count. Better, I suppose. Clubs didn’t really get fun till after midnight.

“I was thinking of heading out to Club Grimm,” I offered some time later, my hands buried deep in my leather jacket. She just looked up at me from the front step as she did every time I suggested leaving the house. At home, she seemed fine since she could always keep an eye on me. At home, I might as well be the neutered pet in the corner, playing dead, waiting for the masters of the house to realize I was starving.

“Do you really have to go tonight?” she asked softly. I saw bits of the old Annie showing through. Suddenly, it was gone and I instantly missed it. “I mean, you wouldn’t die if you kept it in your pants for one measly night. I thought George was the wolf, not you.”

I chuckled. “Is that what you think I’m doing every night? Shagging some random girl?”

“Well you’re not feeding, are you? You look like shit,” she answered bluntly. I laughed harder, bearing my teeth. “Let me guess! You go bowling. You’re taking a Spanish class at the learning annex. You’re—”

I put up a hand between us, gesturing her to stop. “I’m asking you to come with me, Annie. You can keep an eye on me then... I promise I won’t bite.”

She squinted her eyes up at me but her brow was still knit and her lips were purses crookedly in her special I’m-trying-to-secretly-tell-you-you’re-being-a-prat sort of way. Then, that all melted when a couple passed behind us and her feelings were wiped off her face. She was left blank.

“They probably think you’re talking to yourself,” she said lightly, staring at them as they passed.

“What are you talking about?” I replied, snapping from her to the couple. They were huddled under an umbrella, giggling away in their own little world. “They can see you. I’m telling you. They can see you. Unless… you don’t want them to?”

She faced away quickly. “Forget it, Mitchell. I’m going to pay a visit to my grave. That always cheers me up. You go ahead. Go bowling or whatever the kids are calling it these days.”

I chuckled and waved her off. She was in one of her moods. Ghostly PMS, we’d labeled it. It hadn’t really gone away in a while so I naturally imagined the worst, a trait learned from George. I pondered all the reasons why she’d be angry on the way to Club Grimm. Was she angry at me for killing Lauren? For making George kill Herrick? For bringing the entire vampire community on our little house?

Or, was she angry at me for missing her chance at death? She gave all that up for me, to stay by my side when I was hurt. She missed her train. I’d be mad as a fucking hatter if I were her. I’d probably condemned her to an eternity in purgatory. I knew this and I lived with it. It was just another chip on my shoulder.

I was about ready to vomit when I got into Club Grimm. They knew me at the door since I was there every other night. I just sat in a corner, drank my sludge like everyone else, and watched the girls dance. Okay, I imagined them naked, in my bed, bleeding from their delicate, swan-like necks… but I held back. I’d resisted for weeks.

So, when Lee walked in wearing a ripped, black dress, splattered in blood, I jumped to my feet. She sauntered across the club like a present, or maybe some cruel joke meant to test my resolve. Or, maybe, she was both. I watched from the shadows like the monster I was, my mouth salivating and my fangs threatening to emerge. I felt them stabbing at my lips, just ready for that will to drop. My eyes must have looked like black abysses but nobody really looked you in the eyes at Club Grimm.

I watched her cross the dance floor to the bar in the back and sit, staring as though in shock at the mirror behind the elaborate rows of wine bottles. I couldn’t see her eyes but everything about her seemed cold and empty. She raised a trembling hand and ordered a shot of tequila. I guess it was too dark for others to see the blood, though it was smeared all about her arms as though she’d been holding onto someone.

I took a few steps closer, trying to focus on her smell. The blood was not hers, that was for sure. It was vampire blood – the blood held the subtle hints of decay unnoticeable to human senses – and she had a very steady heartbeat. I relaxed upon hearing its beat the closer I got. It meant she wasn’t one of my kind. This wasn’t meant for me, I prayed. They hadn’t found me.

That’s when I realized what she was. A victim, probably in more ways than one.

The walk to her felt like it took a year. The thirst was messing with my sense of time, of motion, more so than usual. It turned me into a hunter the instant she walked in and wasn’t letting go quite yet. As I came up behind her, it took every ounce of my concentration to make sure I gripped her arm gently, not forcibly. Hunger did curious things to strength, no matter the being.

She was staring right at the spot in the mirror where I should have been but wasn’t and still didn’t react in the least. She’d definitely seen vampires before. What’s more, it was like she was waiting for me to come to her. She didn’t jerk away at my touch. I could feel something beneath the ripped sleeves of her dress, almost like wires stretched over her skin, and realized they were scars.

“Don’t do it here. You’d only expose yourself,” she whispered as though sure only I could hear her. When I didn’t’ respond, merely continued to gape at her reflection, she continued, “Just get over with then. Don’t make me beg.”

The music was blaring behind us to the rhythm of strobe lights so nobody noticed the vampire with no reflection and the blood-drenched girl at the bar. She talked straight at the piece of mirror where my image should have been. I didn’t reply, too lost in concentration and shock at the proximity of all that beautiful blood.

Then, she shut her eyes tightly and gritted her teeth, preparing for something. She bent her neck slightly as though welcoming the bite. I noticed there were no scars there, no puncture wounds. I realized later that there wouldn’t be. The neck was a place reserved for lovers, an intimate spot. She would not have been bitten there.

“You know what I am?” I growled instead, my eyes black as night. I didn’t need a reflection to tell me that.

She nodded and gulped, her eyes still shut. She was so tiny in my arms. I had to press myself up behind her so she wouldn’t fall off the bar stool. She was in delicate condition, even if the blood was not hers.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” I whispered in her ear as calmly as I could, trying to hide the strain in my voice. “My name is Mitchell. I don’t kill humans, I promise.”

Her eyes snapped open at the sound of my name. She finally turned and faced me for an instant, just long enough to scare the death out of me. I swear I almost heard my heart beat again, as deafeningly loud as a thunderclap, and my ribs tightened painfully. Was it guilt over what had surely been done to this poor girl? Was it shame for what I was? Or… was it fear? I could never tell. Even to this day.

After that instant passed, her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed back onto my chest just as the bartender came back with her drink. Seeing her asleep in my arms, he finally paid attention to her state, to the rips and the blood, and probably began to panic.

“Is that blood?” he hissed at me, leaning over the bar with wild eyes. He cursed and reached under for a phone. I put a free hand up to stop him, carrying her in my other. Her head fell back over my arm, exposing her neck to me fully. My whole body shook.

“I’ve got it under control, Thomas,” I told him. I was a frequent visitor to the club, after all. I had some leverage. “I work at the hospital, remember? Let me take her and you guys can save yourselves the bad press.”

He put down the phone and gave me a cautious nod. In other words, he didn’t like it and knew he’d probably regret it later on, but he couldn’t risk calling an ambulance and possibly a police car to a club where half the people on the dance floor were high on one drug or another.

I swallowed down the shot of tequila she’d ordered and threw her arm over my shoulder. I wrapped my other arm around her waist and lifted her up onto her feet. I was dragging her but nobody noticed in the lights. If anyone shot me a weary eye, I smiled at them reassuringly and they swiftly went back to ignoring us.

I carried her to the alley next to the club and sat her up on a high pile of crates. The bloodlust was getting easier as I realized she had no fresh wounds on her anywhere. I took her cheeks in my palms and brought her face to the steady light overhead. She obviously recognized my name but I didn’t recognize her face. Though, that hardly meant anything since Herrick was killed. My name was on the lips of every vampire from Bristol to Edinburgh.

I tried to wake her, shook her a bit, but her heart was slow and calm and it almost hurt to disturb her. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days. In some sense, she looked like me. I realized then that she was just a victim, meant to be pitied and cared for, not some offending specter from my past or a human weapon from my present foes.

If I just thought of her as a victim instead of a human being, it made it easier to care for her.

“Come on, beautiful,” I whispered, smearing away a drop of blood on her cheek with my thumb. “Show me those pretty blue eyes again.”

She stirred and her hand shot up to my wrist, tearing me off her. “Don’t touch me like that, vampire. I haven’t given you the right.”

I laughed softly. “You gave me the right the moment you collapsed in my arms, thank you very much. Look around, sweetheart. You’re torn up, covered in blood, and walking through the dull streets of Bristol. You don’t really have anyone else.”

She stared at my teeth, my smile, and I wondered if she was looking for my fangs, waiting for them to appear. Were they even hidden? Did my eyes flare black at the sight of her? She was lovely, I’d give her that, beneath all the blood and bird nest hair.

She blinked twice, probably the most I’d seen her blink all night, looked around, and relaxed. She knew that if I wanted to kill her or rape her, I would have done so already. We were alone in an alley by a club, where all our voices were smothered by the rhythm inside. She was easy prey.

“Sorry. I didn’t realize it was you,” she answered softly. I noticed the change in her tone. She was warmer now, tired as though the shock were subsiding.

“Do we know each other?” I asked.

She shook her head and rested back against the brick wall of the alley. She let go of my wrist and my hands dropped, heavy as stone, by my sides. “Only by reputation,” she said, her voice slurred by exhaustion. “You killed Herrick. The vampires are abuzz.”

“So I’m famous, then?” I chuckled drily but didn’t correct her. It was better for us if the vampires thought I, not George, killed Herrick. “Might I ask what a girl like you is doing hanging around vampires? I don’t intend to be self-deprecating but we’re not exactly a cuddly sort. And why the hell, might I ask, are you covered in vampire blood?”

Tears started to form in her eyes, the memories probably replaying in her mind. I instantly regretted my questions. They weren’t important. She wasn’t a danger to me and she needed help. She just sniffed though and the pain seemed to recede off her face behind some imaginary wall.

“It’s my brothers. He was turned four months back,” she confessed.

“I’m sorry.” Her eyes locked on mine but my heart didn’t stutter like it did in the club. Whatever spell she had on me was done with.

“Don’t be. It wasn’t his fault. He tried to fight it, like you… You’re fighting it right now, aren’t you? You look in pain.”

I gulped but continued to smile, relaxed and charming as ever. “You’re the one covered in blood. Look, I don’t know who’s after you but I’ve got a place around here. You can get cleaned up. It’s safe.”

She looked away for a moment, pondering. Then, she nodded weakly back at me, her eyes glazing over. I bent down a bit to get a better look.

“You’re going to be okay. I promise,” I reassured her. It was my every intention, the bloodlust quickly dying now.

She shot me a weak smile and said, “Don’t worry, Mitchell. It’s not in me to distrust your kind.”

-----

GEORGE

-----

Nina and I were serious. I guess. I mean, she didn’t run away screaming or send the villagers after me with pitchforks so I’d labeled my big reveal more or less a success. It’s not like I’d ever imagined telling her so I didn’t really have much to compare it to.

The only problem was that if we were, you know, “okay” as she’d said, then why was she avoiding the shit out of me the last few weeks. I knew I had to give her space but how long did one need to cope with the existence of the supernatural. Television must have prepared her for this.

It was our three-month anniversary but I was sure she didn’t remember. She’d never remembered that sort of thing before, at least never bothered to celebrate it with me. I’d planned on surprising her with dinner when she came over after work that night but it was near 10:00 and she still hadn’t shown. I dialed her mobile and, surely enough, she was working the late shift. Again. On our bloody anniversary.

I’d sent Mitchell and Annie away so I was pretty much left to rot in my hairy boots, staring at my centerpiece for an hour or two or three. I figured she’d be home around 5:00 and decided to wait for her on the slim chance that she didn’t go straight to her apartment. All her things were in my closet. I didn’t honestly see what the big leap was all about but Annie and Mitchell had warned me against moving too fast after the big reveal. At this rate, we’d be having kids when we were 60.

I didn’t really mind waiting up for her since I wouldn’t be sleeping anyway. Who could with the state of the world? I put away all my crappy food – made with love, of course – and went to calmly read my newspaper on the kitchen table.

Annie poked her head into the kitchen around 4:00, checking up on me no doubt. What, did she think I’d brought the roof down or something? You set a dishcloth on fire once and you never bloody live it down but Mitchell kills a harem of virgins in Morocco once upon a time and gets set loose on a hospital full of horny nurses like it’s all good. There’s just no justice in the world.

“Did you two have a fight?” asked Annie sheepishly, her mouth hidden behind plaster.

Of course she’d think that. I always read my newspaper after a fight with Nina. It was easier keeping things in perspective when you read about how crappy everyone else has got it. Tonight, it’d been lying conveniently by and it was either that or the Cheerios box which wasn’t, coincidentally, very cheery either.

“No no,” I told her quickly, folding up the newspaper and gesturing for her to grab a seat. “I just went totally daft all of a sudden and forgot she was working the late shift.”

She smiled and came to sit beside me, grabbing an empty mug from the table in her hands. It was a habit she had, I’d noticed long ago, from her human days.

“How was the ol’ grave?” I joked, taking a sip of my own tea. She mirrored me but didn’t actually drink. Mitchell and I wondered if she noticed when she did it.

“It was lovely. I scratched out Owen’s name with a crowbar,” she answered cheerily, like such violent acts were to be applauded. In her case, I suppose it was, so I did.

It’s amazing what turning down death does to one’s self-esteem. It was also lovely not to hear Owen’s name being gushed out every other sentence anymore, not since we found out he was a murderous psychopath. It was getting a big sick.

She suddenly turned her attention to my place settings. “George? Did you make this centerpiece?”

I went a little red around the ears. “Maybe.”

She stifled giggles.

“WHAT?!” I screeched. “She just found out I was a murderous, furry beast with moodier times of the month than she’ll ever have so pardon me if I pull out all the stops.”

Annie hid her face in the empty mug again to hide her wide smile. I suppose it was nice to see her smile again, even if it was at my expense. “Sorry. Sorry. It’s just… George, you covered plastic apples with glitter.”

I opened my mouth to defend my decorative choices when the door suddenly burst open and we both stood up in a rush. It was Mitchell with a girl asleep in his arms. He went to carry her up the stairs, mumbling something like, “Hey guys. This is Lee. She needs a place to clean up. Later.”

Annie and I shared a concerned look before running up after him. “What happened to her?” asked Annie, appearing by his side before I ever got to the top of the stairs. Man, was I getting out of shape? One would think running through the woods at all hours would be great exercise but all I’d managed to develop was a rather nice bum.

“She’s just tired,” said Mitchell. “She’s been feeding her brother for a while.”

I filled in the blanks as Annie went to get a bath started. “He was a vampire?”

“Yup,” he replied as if nothing.

“Mitchell, where did you even find her?” asked Annie, popping back in. I heard the water run in the distance. Mitchell had the girl set down on his bed and he’d begun to gently remove her clothes. I sputtered something about giving us a warning before he undressed strange, blood-soaked girls in front of us but nobody seemed to notice me.

“Club Grimm. She just walked in. I think she’s been walking all night. The blood’s not fresh,” said Mitchell as he handed Annie some ripped pieces of dress. She squealed when he ripped off a final piece, leaving the girl in her black strapless bra and panties. I gulped. I really hoped Nina didn’t walk in just then.

I helped him carry her over to the bathroom and we sat her down on the edge of the bathtub. Annie cleared her throat and said, “Excuse me guys but I think maybe I should take over.”

Mitchell and I both threw our arms in the air in surrender. Annie had a very commanding voice when she wanted, especially now that she could storm vampire strongholds and make things blow up with her mind. It was going to come in really handy next time one of the neighborhood kids decided to use our front door for target practice.

We stepped out and sort of lingered in the hallway, not sure where to go or what to do, scratching the back of our heads. Men, as a gender, were kind of useless in situations like this. Annie seemed to know exactly what to do so we let her at it. We headed down to the kitchen and sat silently around the kitchen table.

That’s when the first, rather obvious, question came to mind. “Mitchell… you didn’t bite her, did you?”

He didn’t seem offended at the accusation. He was sort of used to us mistrusting him ever since he decided to go Dark Side last month. “No. Trust me. I’d be looking a whole lot better than I do now. You can check. She doesn’t have any fresh wounds.”

“No no! I trust you. I was just checking.”

He believed me and went to make her something to eat. “She seems exhausted. The soles of her shoes are almost worn through,” he said to no one. He was pensive, staring off at nothing. He heated her up some of the food meant for the still-elusive Nina and came back to wait with me at the dinner table.

That’s when, after a quick sip from my now-cold coffee, he noticed my centerpiece. He furrowed his brow, turned to me slowly, and asked, “George, did you glitter up a plastic apple?”

-----

ANNIE

-----

We all saw the scars, briefly, when Mitchell tore off her clothes but nobody said anything. Nobody gasped. We were used to scars around here. It was a quick glance and the boys didn’t want to focus on her too much since she was two steps away from being naked. But I did.

Knelt down beside her in the tub, I could see every mark. It was hideous, extensive. Some holes seemed to have been used repeatedly, making craters on her arms. It was restrained to her arms and lower legs and she was still too drowsy to interrogate. I had a thousand questions flying through my mind.

Did it hurt? Well, that was stupid. Of course it did. Did her brother do that or was it more than one? For how long had she been giving herself up like that?

She stirred in the tub and shot awake, splashing water about. I managed to dodge it. I held onto her shoulders, keeping her grounded. She scanned my face for some familiarity but couldn’t find any.

“Hi! Hi!” I quickly shouted. “Sorry, I’m Annie! I’m Mitchell’s friend. You’re at our flat. You’re safe.”

She sighed but her chest continued to heave for a bit. She looked around at the soapy sponge in my hands and the bloody water all around her. I handed it to her and she shot me a tired but grateful smile.

“Thanks, Annie,” she croaked, going to get the dried up splotches of blood on her thighs. “I’ve got it now.”

“Do you want me to go?” I asked, going to stand.

She shook her head. “Would you mind staying for a bit? I haven’t seen another human up close in days.”

I chuckled nervously and began to ramble. “Uh, I’m not really human. I’m sort of… well, I’m a ghost. Sort of. I was. I kind of turned down death so I haven’t a clue what I am now but I was ghost a month ago. Still dead, I guess. Oh and George, the other one you probably saw carrying you into the bathroom? He’s a werewolf. I know. It’s like the setup for a bad sitcom but we’re all good friends and—Shit! Sorry! I’m talking too much!”

She laughed, too softly to really count. “No, it’s nice. Please. Go on. I don’t care what you say. It’s just nice to have someone to talk to.”

I paused and pondered my questions well. “How long have you been with vampires?”

“Vampire,” she corrected. “One. My brother. He was sick. Herrick came to us at home, offered him immortality… he never said what would happen when he got hungry. He killed his girlfriend the first night. He came to me, begged me to keep him from hurting anyone else. I locked him up and, well, did the best I could.”

“You were very brave,” I whispered, watching her limp hands move the sponge slowly over her bare thighs. If it weren’t for the scars, she’d be beautiful.

“He’s family. You just have to do what you can, you know.”

I nodded. I knew very well. Mitchell and George were family. I’d given up death to stay by their side. I didn’t regret it yet but I knew a moment would come when I would, maybe years from now when George or Nina died and me and Mitchell would be left to wander my living room all alone. I’d thought about the situation when that happened. I’d pretty much agreed to be Mitchell’s companion for eternity. I didn’t really mind the company. I loved Mitchell, just like I loved George. What bothered me was that I was actually looking forward to eternity with him.

“Is he your only family?” I asked, just trying to break the silence and my own wandering thoughts.

“Yup. The last of us. My own bloke left me when I kept breaking all our dates to hang out with my brother in the attic so yea, Jamie was the last of us.”

Her words didn’t escape me. “Was?” I echoed softly.

Just then, her brave, distant face and all her concentration faded away. The pain came forward, skewing her face. She began to sob silently and turned her face from me. I ran my hand up and down her back as she hugged her knees in the water.

“I killed him,” she mumbled sometime later through a curtain of tears. “I couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t see me in pain. So he asked me to do it. He asked me to kill him.”

I covered my mouth with one palm and continued to soothe her with the other. I could only imagine her pain but I wasn’t surprised. I’d seen worse in that funeral parlor dungeon. But it was still hard to watch someone so broken, so permanently scarred. I was at least intact.

“We keep going, Lee,” I said, sure of my words. “I know what it’s like. You keep going till you can’t give anymore. I know. It’s okay now. It’s over. He’s free, and so are you.”

The sobbing got louder. It lasted another half hour and then I helped her out of the tub. I wrapped a towel around her and carried her out to Mitchell’s room. It’s not like he’d been sleeping the last month. I doubted he’d mind having a pretty girl in his bed. I hesitated at his bedroom door. He was still downstairs but I didn’t like it. Something in me hated the idea of him having another girl up here. It was like I was already claiming him as my own. He was my companion, not this girl’s.

I swallowed all that silliness away and helped her sit down on the bed. I covered her up in his sheets and watched her instantly doze off. I heard his footsteps up the stairs behind me. Mitchell stood in the doorway, watching us with knitted brows and crossed arms. He looked right through me to the girl in his bed and I felt invisible all over again. I knew that was impossible, that Mitchell could always see me, even the parts I hid from myself. But it still made my stomach flip nervously and my heart shriveled up at the thought of being erased again.

He walked right past me and pulled up the sheets around her. He kissed her forehead and whispered lovingly, “Sleep tight, pretty girl. You’re safe.”

-----

I wanted to make this a one-shot but it looks like it’s going to be a short novella. What do you think? Should I continue it? And before you ask, no, this is in no way a Lee/Mitchell story. It’s Mitchell/Annie. So don’t you fret. More jealous fun and lurid misunderstandings coming soon.

Reviews are better than late-night… bowling.